


The Chronicles of Chiswick

by Blinovitch



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-17 00:51:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 43,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2290913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blinovitch/pseuds/Blinovitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The TARDIS strands Eleven at Clara's flat — six years later than he'd intended to arrive. Trapped across his own timeline and up to his delicate eyebrows in spoilers, he receives a cryptic message from Twelve: one of his former companions is in danger, and he’ll need the help of the others to save her. It’s a reunion the Doctor would love to remember… but one the laws of time doom him to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> From the Eleventh Doctor's perspective, this story takes place between "The Name of the Doctor" and the 50th Anniversary Special. Since the Doctor's memory of these events is erased afterwards, there's no effect on subsequent episodes.
> 
> From Clara's perspective, this story is set several years after the events in Series Eight. Her memories of her travels with the Twelfth Doctor will be kept canon-compliant for as long as possible.

**OCTOBER 2019 - CHISWICK, LONDON**

* * *

"Oi, Clara,  _there_  you are! Sorry about the TARDIS… been sulking since Trenzalore, but I'm sure it'll come out of the carpet. Say, did you get a new sofa?"

Clara's heard the phrase  _that blew my mind_  before... but until this moment, she's never realized just how accurate it could be.

She can't think.

She can't move.

She can't breathe.

And she has no idea how long she's stood frozen in her front hallway, gaping open-mouthed at the dead man in her lounge.

If you'd asked her an hour ago, she would have sworn she remembered him perfectly.

Now, a room's length from him, live and in the flesh, she realizes just how wrong she was about that... how the passing years have stolen him from her, blurring and bleaching his image in her mind.

But here he is, and yes,  _yes_ , that's just how his voice should sound… that smoky, posh staccato he can plunge into thunder at a moment's notice.  _Those_  are his real eyes, light-mixed and changeable as opals. He's being restored to glorious Technicolor inside her head, and she doesn't seem able to do anything but stare at him, her senses snatching greedily at every rediscovered detail and hoarding them for later.

"Clara?" the Doctor says tentatively, taking a step forward, his hand outstretched. "What's wrong? Has something happened?"

She swallows a hysterical titter, sternly reminds herself to get her priorities straight.

There's the universe to consider.

She waits until she's certain that she's gotten her voice perfectly calm and even before she speaks. "You're crossing your timeline right now. I know that's bad, so… hadn't you better go?"

"I've showed up last week  _again_?" he winces, wringing his hands. "Er, there's just one,  _slightly_  awkward boo-boo. As mentioned previously, sulky TARDIS; she's gone and ditched me. Suppose I could just hide upstairs for a bit until I'm gone…"

He makes it three steps towards the stairs before he freezes.

"Hold on a tick," he frowns, pointing. "Comfy new sofa wasn't there last week."

Clara hopes she doesn't look as panicked as she feels. "Of course it was!"

"I have a keen eye for detail, Clara, and that sofa was most assuredly  _not_  there last time." He's on the prowl now, twirling around the room. "And neither was that table, or  _that_  one, or those chairs, or that window, and the fireplace was on the other side, and…"

" _Penny in the air_ …" Clara mutters.

The Doctor rushes towards her, clamping his hands on her shoulders, his eyes wild. "Clara, this is a whole different room! This is a whole different room in a… a… a whole different house!"

He flings himself at the kitchen door, giving it an obscene lick and smacking his lips. "Last week did  _not_  have this funny sort of prawn-y aftertaste."

"Doctor," Clara tries. "Timestream, remember?"

But it's too late. The Doctor has gone unnaturally still, truly  _seeing_  her for the first time since he's arrived.

In the silence that falls, each tick of the hallway clock seems to grow, to echo.

Waves of emotions crash over his face: horror, sorrow, guilt. He pushes his hair back, swallows hard.

"Clara," he begins, his voice slow and pained, "Please tell me I haven't done  _this_  again. If I've left you waiting for twelve years…"

" _Twelve years_?" Clara sputters. "You think it's been  _twelve years_? I'm taking that night cream straight back to the chemist."

That shocks a chuckle out of him, and he tilts his head, examining her face. "How old  _are_  you, then?"

She arches an eyebrow. "How old do you  _think_  I am?"

"Not falling for  _that_  one again," the Doctor declares. "Still got the bite marks from Joan of Arc."

She can't help laughing, and he beams in a way that cramps her heart.

"Can I hug you?" she blurts, then bites her lip. "I mean, if it won't short out the time differential o-or reverse the polarity of the neutron flow…"

He sweeps her up and spins her before crushing her to him, his fingers threading through her hair to cup the back of her head.

She's trying so hard to record  _every single second_  of this for later. She's lived a million lifetimes, been to both ends of creation… and nothing has ever left her quite as awestruck and grateful as getting to be  _here_ , to do  _this_  again.

She will not be the first one to let go. She rests her head against his chest, eyes closed, gulping in greedy lungfuls of his scent.

"Oh, my Clara, I'm so sorry," he murmurs, kissing the top of her head.

"For what?"

"Whatever boneheaded thing I did that made you leave me." He tucks his fingers beneath her jaw, lifting her gaze to his. "How long has it been?"

_Oh, God, the look in his eyes… she can't, she can't, she can't…_

So Clara does what she does best: hide it all inside a joke.

"Who says I left? Maybe he got sick of me," she says archly. "Maybe I sassed him one too many times and he chucked me out over Cardiff."

" _He_ ," the Doctor frowns. "You've said…  _he_. More than once..."

Clara pales. The Doctor's moved away from her again, stabbing at the air with his Thinking Finger.

"I regenerate again, don't I? Shouldn't be possible, but somehow... and into someone so different that you don't even think of us as the same person."

"I  _know_  you're the same person," she insists. "Who knows that better than me? It was just… different."

His eyes narrow. " _Valeyard_  different?"

"No, no, nothing like that, you haven't got anything to worry about. It's just… you know. You changed, as you always do. He...  _you_... said Jammie Dodgers were like stale strawberry bogeys."

The Doctor looks absolutely scandalized.

"He was just... more like a… well... a  _mentor_ , I suppose."

The Doctor drops bonelessly into an armchair, plucking a pen off the side table and glaring at it. "A  _mentor_."

"Now look, you know we can't keep talking about this!"

He rolls the pen between his fingers, mouth set in a tight line. "He hurt you."

She blinks. "I never said that."

"Which is a rather different sentence than  _No, he didn't_."

"He's a good man," Clara insists. "Very good. It was just my time to go."

"Did we ever — I mean, you and  _me_ , before… " the Doctor blurts, but snaps his mouth shut.

"I can't answer any more questions about your future, Doctor. You know that. Honestly, I've told you way too much already..."

" _Mentor_ ," he pouts, crossing his arms.

She swallows her frustration, tries another tactic. "You were my best friend, you know. I haven't seen you in… well, a while… and I thought I'd never see you again. If you're stuck here for a bit, couldn't we, I don't know... go to the chippy, take a walk? Talk about something else?"

He nods, reaching out to take her hand, bringing it to his lips…

"You've got a  _tattoo_ ," he sputters in shock, turning her wrist up for a better look. "In  _Gallifreyan_?"

"I lost a bet," she smiles. "Very long story. It says something rude, I'm told."

The Doctor pulls out his glasses, arranging them on his nose and having a better look. "It's not rude. It just says  _Time Lady._ "

"But that makes no sense, why would he —  _oh!_ "

The Doctor's pulled her down into his lap, one arm winding around her waist while the other holds her inner wrist up for his inspection.

"Well, I suppose, uh, you can probably… s-see… better…" Her voice rises to a squeak on the last word, when he rests his chin atop her shoulder.

"It's an  _ambigram_ ," the Doctor says, fascinated.

"A what now?"

"A message that says different things depending on how it's turned." He gently maneuvers her arm. "If I turn your wrist just a bit, look. See? Now it says 'Blue Box'."

She peers at it, but sighs. "Sorry, can't — I've forgotten almost all the Gallifreyan I knew."

"The  _Time Lady_  part is strange, too," he continues, his voice dropping to the lower register that makes heat pool in her stomach. "Are you certain future me was just your  _mentor_ , Clara?"

He drags his thumb slowly across the design, seemingly oblivious to the effect it has on Clara's breathing. "The literal translation here is  _Woman Time Lord_ , which is odd; there's already a word in Gallifreyan for Time Lady. Perhaps he had to swap the words to fit the ambigram?"

He bends his lips closer to her captive ear, drops his voice to a purr. "Swap them back, and it becomes  _Time Lord's Woman_."

Their eyes lock and hold, the moment lingering...

Until she bursts into laughter.

"Oh,  _God_ ," Clara's giggling so hard now she's nearly choking. "Sorry, sorry, but if you  _knew_  him... that's so  _not_  — I promise — it's just  _not_. I bet if you keep moving my wrist, it turns into something like  _Woman That Time Lord Wishes Would Shut Her Blasted Sandgrown Cakehole_."

The Doctor's grip on her wrist tightens. "He talks to you like that?"

He's hurting her just a tiny bit, but the protectiveness is so lovely she can't bring herself to mind.

They're back in spoiler territory, though, and she's rapidly gaining respect for how River has to deal with this  _all the time_.

So she does what River would do — she changes the subject.

"What does the rest of it say?" Clara asks. "Quite curious now."

He doesn't want to let it go, she can tell, but he angles her wrist to a new position anyway. "Hmm, that's  _sleep chamber_ , and that one's — well, that's a little hard to translate. It'd be  _the clear light of the silver sun_ , I suppose, although…"

"I've forgotten  _almost_  all the Gallifreyan," Clara interrupts. "Not so far gone I've forgotten my  _name_ , thank you. I suppose it was the closest thing to what 'Clara' means."

He tries it out, whispering it against her hair. "It suits you."

"Wait... does that mean this part of the ambigram says  _Clara's bedroom_?" she chuckles. "Cheeky."

His face flushes beet-red. "It's, ah, prepositional."

" _In_  my bedroom, then. Still quite cheeky."

"It could mean  _guest room_ ," he offers weakly.

_Guest room._  Clara's face pales. "And the bit before was 'blue box', you said.  _Blue box in Clara's guest room?_ "

"Something to do with the TARDIS, I suppose."

"He  _knew_ ," Clara whispers. "He knew, of  _course_  he did — he  _remembered_  this. He knew you'd come here, knew I'd see you one more time..."

She touches the tattoo lightly. "Doctor, these must be  _instructions_... a message he's left for  _you_. The blue box isn't a metaphor — he gave me one the last time I saw him. He said he'd be back for it some day... I just didn't realize which him he meant."

They share a long, shocked look before the Doctor turns back to the message.

"Suppose we'd better see what the rest says, then. This symbol designates importance, and then there's…"

The Doctor pauses, scarlet creeping up his neck. "I-I'm afraid I can't read this next bit."

It's perfectly obvious that he's lying, and Clara's eyes narrow. "Perhaps the ink blurred over time?"

"Clever girl. I'm sure you're right. Moving on..." the Doctor taps the circles of ink with his finger. "He insults my intelligence, orders me to deliberately create a fixed point in time, insults my intelligence  _again_ , orders me to save someone, compares my physique to a marionette made of toothpicks…"

Her arm is bent so awkwardly now that she has to duck under her elbow to look at him. "All right,  _that_  stuff actually sounds like him.  _Now_  do you believe me about the 'Woman Time Lord' thing?"

He nods. "And that's where it loops back to the beginning. Something about this  _itches_ …"

"Maybe the start of the message is earlier in the loop — maybe you're meant to save a Time Lady?"

"None left," he shrugs. "It must be cipher, or a code, or…"

"Well, the last part that made no sense turned out to be a proper name. What if it's a name, like mine was?"

The Doctor stops. Gapes. Seizes her by the back of the neck and smacks a kiss above her eyebrows.

"Woman Time Lord," he marvels. "Woman. Time. Lord. It works  _twice_ , Clara,  _twice_!"

"That's... great?" she says, having absolutely no clue what he's on about.

"You lived through the Roman Empire a few dozen times, Clara… what's 'Woman Time Lord' in Latin?"

"It's, ah… oh, I'm going to muck the grammar up, but…" she screws her eyes tightly closed. "Something like… domina tempus nobilis?"

The Doctor grins from ear to ear. " _Donna Temple-Noble_."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's leaning on the fence around Turnham Green, his eyes on the Waitrose across the street. Donna's just outside the entrance, carrying on an extremely boisterous mobile conversation that's earning her a few sniffs and dirty looks from the other shoppers.
> 
> "Oi! Eyes front, toff, you'll smudge your Manolos," Donna calls out to the last of these, and the Doctor can't help the fond grin that splits his face.

_Donna Temple-Noble._

Three centuries and a new face later, the sight of her still burns.

The Doctor has mentally prepared himself to see her aged, but Donna actually looks fantastic... by human standards, possibly even better than when she'd traveled with him.

She's glowing with the extended youth only available to the wealthy... trim and fit in perfectly-tailored casuals, her makeup understated but flawless, the old fire of her hair painstakingly maintained by professionals.

But when the Doctor thinks  _my beautiful Donna_ , the picture in his mind is of a runny-nosed, red-faced temp from Chiswick, sobbing for the Ood.

To him, in that moment, she'd never been so stunningly beautiful.

So human, so raw, so  _awake_.

His Donna.

According to the annoyingly vague message he's left himself, he's meant to save her… but it's rather hard to tell from  _what_  at the moment.

He's leaning on the fence around Turnham Green, his eyes on the Waitrose across the street. Donna's just outside the entrance, carrying on an extremely boisterous mobile conversation that's earning her a few sniffs and dirty looks from the other shoppers.

"Oi! Eyes front, toff, you'll smudge your Manolos," Donna calls out to the last of these, and the Doctor can't help the fond grin that splits his face.

Donna finishes her call and heads inside... and again, the Doctor wonders why she needs his help at all. She looks lovely, she seems happy, and her current problems seem to involve the acquisition of organic produce.

He ducks inside the park, finding a bench with a decent view of the shop's exit and pulling out the small tablet computer Clara had lent him.

He's missed a message from her:  _Find out anything interesting?_

_Nothing yet_ , he replies.

Rule One: the Doctor lies.

In truth, he's found out all sorts of interesting things.

Just... not about Donna.

* * *

Clara, poor girl, has tried so hard to keep his future a secret.

But she's no River Song, and she's been leaking spoilers everywhere.

It's not just the things Clara unintentionally blabs, although she's dropped a few choice bombs so far. It's the things she  _doesn't_  say, the words that make her flinch, the way she looks at him.

And just the way she  _looks_ , full stop.

After ten years with him on the TARDIS, Amy and Rory had looked noticeably older than the age they claimed to be on earth. The Doctor still remembers the sinking feeling he'd gotten at their party, watching Amy mingle with her former schoolmates. Next to her, they'd looked baby-faced and chubby-cheeked… and next to them, he'd finally noticed the delicate lines creeping in at the edges of her eyes.

Clara, however, looks just the age she should be… and that means she couldn't have traveled with him more than a year or two.

In other words, he doesn't have much time left.

And he knows it's even less than that, because of the damned  _pronouns_.

Not once has Clara mentioned an adventure with  _him_  —  _this_  him — that he doesn't already know about. It's all stuff she did with the  _next_  one, the one he is secretly starting to resent.

Worse, there's the photograph.

He's been conspiring with Angie and Artie about Clara's birthday for weeks. They've been planning a really grand, blowout affair… something awesome.

But then he'd come here, to this time, and seen the framed picture on Clara's mantlepiece.

It's a nice photo, really, if you don't look at it too closely. Clara's flanked by her father and the Maitlands, all smiling together in the Maitland kitchen.

There's a few haphazard streamers taped up, paper party hats… one of those generic, store-bought cakes that never tastes of much.

Clara's smile does not reach her eyes.

In theory, the Doctor knows he could have lived for centuries before Clara's birthday arrived.

But in his hearts, he knows that isn't what is going to happen.

He's never admitted it to Clara, but every time she leaves him to spend the week with the Maitlands, he immediately jumps forward to the next Wednesday and picks her right back up again.

He will burn through the weeks before her birthday in a few short days.

_He'll be gone in less than a week._

The cruelty of it doesn't escape him. Not long ago, he was hiding on a cloud, too distraught over the Ponds to function. Had he known another regeneration was possible, he would have welcomed a rebirth then, a reset of feelings and personality, but now...

* * *

But now, he's being tortured by three little words.

Clara won't tell him  _why_  she stopped traveling with him, or when, or how. The most enlightening clue she's dropped so far is an offhand comment about being a "third wheel", but she'd refused to explain.

He knows she's right. Rationally, logically, he knows that Clara  _shouldn't_  tell him anything.

After all, she's only answered one of his questions so far, and that answer is driving him insane.

It had been just as he was leaving to track down Donna. He'd used Clara's restroom, his eye falling on a cluster of prescription medication bottles on the shelf above her sink.

Two different antidepressants and a sleep aid. Judging from the dates and refills remaining, things she'd been taking regularly for months, if not longer.

He'd stood there, pill bottle in hand, while all the little details he'd seen but not truly  _seen_  washed over him.

The calendar marked with nothing but an upcoming dentist appointment. The freezer full of ready meals, the barren refrigerator. The machine that brewed single-serving tea pods. The empty fireplace with no firewood in sight, the lone toothbrush, the light coating of dust on all the seats in the lounge except the one directly in front of the television.

He'd added it all up, and despised the sum.

_What had happened to her... and how much of it was his fault?_

And when he'd walked out the door to find Donna, and Clara had said "goodbye" like she never expected him to return, it had exploded out of him.

"Were you all right?  _Are_  you all right?" he'd demanded, swiveling on her front walk to face her. "You can tell me  _that_  much, at least."

"I was all right," Clara had promised.

The Doctor had smiled... or rather, he'd started to.

"... I had Jack," Clara had finished, shutting the door between them.

And the smile had slid right off the Doctor's face.

_I had Jack._

_I. Had. Jack._

* * *

The Doctor doesn't need to ask which Jack she's referring to.

There's only one Jack who knows exactly how it feels to be the third-wheel companion.

To die a million times in the name of the Doctor.

To make the ultimate sacrifice only to be left behind.

Big-hearted, loyal, protective Jack. Of course he'd be there for Clara.

The Doctor sternly tells himself that he ought to be grateful... or at least, ought to be glad that Clara had someone there for her who understood.

It's just... well... he can't help wishing that it was anyone but  _Jack_.

Captain Jack Harkness, evaporating the universe's knickers with a single hello. Muscles and dimples and shiny white teeth, carved of charisma and oozing sex.

In his own unconventional way, Jack is a healer. He has that rare kind of confidence that can be shared with others:  _I could have anyone, and I want you... so obviously, you must be amazing._

And the Doctor knows  _exactly_  how Jack would convince a downtrodden Clara that she was still beautiful and desirable and wanted.

_I had Jack_ , Clara had said... and suddenly, it's the most important thing in the world to remember  _exactly how_ she'd said it, what specific smile she'd had on, the precise look in her eyes.

Because the Doctor knows that he's too proud to ever bring it up to her again, too afraid to ask the questions that are buzzing and stinging inside his head. It'll eat him alive, but he'll pretend he never heard it... or cared too little to bother remembering it.

He thinks of all the times he's touched Clara. Chaste forehead kisses, friendly hugs, tiny caresses. He's savored each one, the little memories proudly polished and displayed in his mind, a chronicle of his hesitant progress towards... well, he's never been quite sure about  _that_ , but it delights and terrifies him all at once.

It all feels so  _silly_  now, so prissy and inadequate. He's never felt quite so old and so much like a naive schoolboy all at once.

The bench beneath him trembles, and he snaps out of his reverie to see who has sat beside him.

"You stalkin' me, no-brows?" Donna asks.

Right.  _Right_. He'd meant to be watching the grocer door, and now he'd...  _blimey_.

"No stalking, sorry to disappoint. Just sitting." He gestures at the nearby monument. " _Love_  an obelisk."

"Oi, how stupid do you think I am? Screamin' purple frock coat and a bow tie don't exactly  _blend in_ , mister. If you're another long-lost 'relative' hoping to cash in, don't bother. I've heard every sob story under the sun."

"All right, fair cop, I was following you just a bit. No harm meant, I promise. It's just... you looked familiar, and I was trying to figure out how I knew you before I said hello."

Donna looks skeptical, and he braces himself for an onslaught before her face suddenly softens.

"You know, it's weird, but there's something familiar about you, too." Donna tilts her head, her face screwing up in concentration. "You a bit older than you look, then?"

He laughs. "Much."

"Did your hair used to go...?" Donna waves her hand vertically over her forehead.

He sits up straighter, eyes widening in surprise. "Yes, actually."

"Wait... are you the doctor?"

His whole body spasms in dismay, but Donna's still talking.

"Had a funny spell a few years back. All fuzzy now, but I know they had a doctor out. Used to hear Mum and Gramps talking about it, when they thought I couldn't hear. Was it you?"

It's a decent explanation, and better than any he can come up with instead... so, he nods.

"Say... do you think I could make an appointment?"

"Are you having some trouble?"

Donna flushes a little, averting her eyes. "Been havin' these headaches. Migraines, maybe. Nerys says those make you see funny things, yeah? Feels like my head's splittin' open, and I always have the most rubbish thoughts before they hit..."

"What kind of rubbish thoughts?"

"Just loads of X-Files stuff. Tentacle faces holdin' their own brains, telepathic bugs. Think I might know where it comes from... my Gramps used to be wild for all that alien conspiracy rot. Crop circles and probes, y'know, told me the craziest stories. Funny thing is, he hasn't done it in ages. Still glued to his telescope, but I guess he got over the rest. Anyway, you got a card?"

He doesn't, of course, but he writes down Clara's number on Donna's Waitrose receipt, and Donna promises she'll call him Monday.

Once she is out of sight, he sighs and rubs his temples.

_Donna_  is who he needs to focus on right now:  _Donna_ , and no one and nothing else.

He can erase her memories again, but there's a bigger, scarier question:

_What triggered them to come back in the first place?_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course, it's Jack who starts the nicknames.
> 
> This Thursday, they've all met up at the Black Lion... and a chill, damp wind off the Thames has given them the courtyard to themselves. Sophie's home with a cough, but the rest of them have made it... even Sarah Jane, who is a rare treat.
> 
> "All right, this is ridiculous," Jack announces, setting his pint on the table. "All these stories I'm hearing are going to waste, because I can't remember which version of him I'm supposed to be undressing in my head. And we're not doing the numbers, the numbers suck. Ladies and gentlemen... tonight, we name the Twelve."

"A last-minute lunch invitation from Clara Oswald," Martha smiles, sipping her water. "So… when did the Doctor show up?"

Clara plants her face in her hands. "Oh,  _God_. Have I seriously turned into  _that_  friend?"

"No, and it'd be fine if you had. What's up, then? Aliens can't be invading, Christmas is still weeks away."

"It's not Branston Pickle," Clara whispers. "I-it's  _Captain Fez_."

" _Oh_ ," Martha breathes, fully aware of how significant this is. " _Well_ , then."

* * *

**FOUR YEARS EARLIER**

* * *

Of course, it's Jack who starts the nicknames.

This Thursday, they've all met up at the Black Lion... and a chill, damp wind off the Thames has given them the courtyard to themselves. Sophie's home with a cough, but the rest of them have made it... even Sarah Jane, who is a rare treat.

"All right, this is  _ridiculous_ ," Jack announces, setting his pint on the table. "All these stories I'm hearing are going to waste, because I can't remember which version of him I'm supposed to be undressing in my head. And we're  _not_  doing the numbers, the numbers suck. Ladies and gentlemen... tonight, we name the Twelve."

Mickey scratches his head. "Thought it was really thirteen? Or wait, fourteen? Clara said..."

"And that's exactly why we're not doing  _numbers_  anymore, Mickey," Jack sighs. "Thank you for proving my point."

By the time they hit Peak Drunk — generally defined as whenever Jack starts singing — it has been decided.

"Without further ado," Craig announces, holding up the napkin on which he's been scribbling. "I give you, the list. In order of appearance, we have: Beethoven, Ringo, The Amazing Hefnerino..."

Sarah Jane lets out a snort that turns into a fit of giggles.

" _Scarfy-Poo_... you still sure about that one?"

"I have never been more certain of anything," Sarah Jane says grandly.

"Totally Cricket Ken Doll, Grumpus the Clown..."

"You do realize he's going to utterly murder us," Martha laughs. "Any minute now, there's gonna be that TARDIS asthma, and  _the Oncoming Storm, Vessel of the Final Darkness_  is going to find out you named him... wait, what  _did_  we end up with for the current one?"

"It's just...  _Snark_ ," Craig reads, holding the napkin up to the light.

"Clara, I am  _disappointed_!" Jack cries. "We can't end it like that! Not after the unmitigated triumph that is  _Scarfy-Poo_. This is all on you, sweetheart, none of the rest of us have even met him."

Everyone turns in Clara's direction, and she swallows hard. "Sorry... I'll, um. I'll think about it and get back to you?"

Jack's about to unleash a fresh barrage of sass... but when he sees her stricken face, his mouth snaps closed. "We can go with  _Snark_  for now. Clara, walk with me a minute?"

She follows him down to the river steps, where Jack shrugs off his coat and wraps it around her shoulders. "How many Wednesdays has it been, now?"

"Five," she says, pulling the jacket closer against the chill. "He used to hop back and mail me a note when he was going to miss a week, but... he never remembers to do that anymore."

"So you just, what? Sit on your front step all day, all dressed up, waiting for him to maybe decide to show?"

Clara sighs, looks at her shoes, is silent for a long time.

" _Branston Pickle_ ," she finally says. "He can be  _Branston Pickle_. That's better than  _Snark_."

Jack pulls a face. "That brown stuff you people ruin cheese sandwiches with?"

"He eats it with a spoon out of the jar sometimes."

"But that's not why you picked the name."

She shakes her head.

"Chunks of cauliflower and turnips in a sour vinegar sauce.  _This_  is how you're summing up the guy you're waiting around for."

"It's an acquired taste," Clara says. "You just have to get used to it."

"If you make it through the whole jar, do you get a Jammie Dodger for dessert?" Jack asks, too-casually.

He sees the low blow hit her, her suddenly-shiny eyes turning to him in wounded surprise.

"That version of him is  _gone_ , Clara." Jack lays a hand on her shoulder. "He's not... trapped inside there somewhere, listening to everything you say. You can't prove anything to him, you can't do anything for him.  _He's never coming back_."

"I  _know_  that," Clara tosses her head. "You think I don't know that?"

Without warning, Jack yanks her into his arms. One hand slides down the small of her back, their lips a breath apart. Clara freezes in shock, her eyes enormous.

And then he smirks, stepping back and brandishing the bow tie he's slipped out of her pocket.

"Clara Oswald," he drawls, twirling it around his finger. "You are a  _really_  terrible liar."

* * *

"So... how are you holding up?" Martha asks when Clara finishes filling her in on the prior Doctor's arrival that morning.

" _So_  confused," Clara sighs. "Feelings, you know, but also the..."

The corner of Martha's mouth twitches. "Timey-wimeyness?"

"Yeah. That. I mean... everything that's happening right now, Branston Pickle must have  _remembered_ , right? For him, all this was in his past. And for that matter, when my... I mean, uh,  _Captain Fez_... when he regenerated, when he phoned... he knew this was coming for me later."

Clara props her chin in her palm, still musing. "I spent so long being furious at him for leaving me behind to go to Trenzalore, but... what if he  _had_  to, and this is why? He'd already seen my future... it could be one of those fixed-point things."

Martha nods sympathetically, and Clara sighs. "It's like when you watch a movie with a twist ending, then have to re-watch the whole film because nothing meant what you thought it meant."

"Maybe not," Martha says. "There's that...  _thing_. Malkovich Limits or something. Like, if Young Me met Old Me, Young Me would forget it afterwards and not remember it until they were Old Me. Some timestream-crossing thing."

"Oh, right! He explained that to me once, when I asked why Granddad and Sandshoes didn't remember..."

"You should shag him," Martha grins wickedly.

Clara spits water all over her salad. " _What?_ "

"You heard me. You should shag him 'til he can't walk straight." Martha leans forward. "I  _know_  you want to, and you're on a rather literal deadline. Hell, who knows? Maybe it would change your past for the better."

"I can't  _shag him_ ," Clara sputters.

"You're the one who told me that his granddaughter had a baby with a human. The parts are totally compatible."

"It's not about...  _parts_..." Clara blushes furiously. "It's just... I couldn't stand for him to remember it. You know.  _Later_. When he's  _not himself_."

"Blimey," Martha winces. "I didn't think about it from  _that_  angle."

"After he regenerated, he made it brutally clear that he was no longer...  _interested_ ," Clara fiddles with her napkin. "I was so grateful that I'd never crossed the line with the one before. I couldn't stand the thought of Branston Pickle remembering me that... well, that  _vulnerable_ , you know?"

"Oh yeah, I totally get it," Martha nods. "I'd feel the exact same way. Be like the school bully getting a copy of your sexts, right?"

"Oh, he isn't a  _bully_ , just..." Clara sighs, shrugs. "I suppose it would have been a bit like that."

"What's Captain Fez look like, anyway? All I really know is he's the youngest-looking and has dodgy hats."

"Tall, thin, brown hair, has a quiff that sort of swoops," Clara gestures in a curve over her eye. "Cheekbones you could cut glass with, the loveliest, funniest chin..."

"Really. Well. That's unfortunate."

"What? Why?"

"Because that means the guy behind you, staring at you like you just shot his dog, is probably him."

* * *

Clara whirls to look behind her, then moans in horror. "Oh, God, and he has that insane Time Lord hearing..."

"Apparently so, because here he comes."

"Martha Smith-Jones!" the Doctor exclaims, clapping his hands together and spreading them wide. "Lovely to see you."

"Right," Martha smirks. "So overcome with joy, you had to sit over there and eavesdrop."

"Didn't want to interrupt," he lies, straightening his bow tie. "Just waiting for a conversational lull."

"By  _eavesdropping_." Martha takes pity on him, dropping her teasing and pushing her chair back. "Oh, come here, you. I haven't seen you in ages."

"It  _is_  wonderful to see you," the Doctor whispers sincerely, kissing her forehead. "I was planning to look you up, actually."

"I don't believe that for a second," Martha informs him.

"No, it's true!" he protests. "I need your help."

"Okay,  _now_  I believe you."

The Doctor pouts, dropping into the extra chair at their table. "It's nothing awful...  _this_  time. And it's for Donna."

He explains about his conversation with Donna at Turnham Green... how she'd assumed he was her old neurologist and wanted an appointment.

He does not look at Clara once during the entire story.

"And it  _would_  be good to check her out with proper medical equipment... but of course, I haven't got a Doctor's office for her to come to..."

"So you want to use mine," Martha guesses.

"Well, it  _is_ awfully handy that your married name matches my alias," he wheedles, fixing her with his biggest and best puppy eyes.

"Oi! God!" Martha cries, flinching away. "How can you still _do that_ when it's not even the same  _face_?"

Now the Doctor  _does_  look at Clara — just a brief, flashing glance — but she's pretending to be absorbed in watching the aquarium across the room.

Martha's eyes flick between the two of them. "All right, you can use it. When Donna calls on Monday, tell her you had a cancellation for five-thirty and can see her then. We normally close at five, but I'll stick around."

"Martha, you're  _scrumptious_ ," he grins daffily, then leans back in his chair, pointing a finger at each of them. "Never realized you two were friends. How'd you meet?"

Martha waits a moment to see if Clara will answer, but Clara's still pretending that the fish are the most interesting thing in the universe.

"We had a regular Thursday night thing going for a while, before everyone got so busy," Martha finally shrugs. "Few others dropped in from time to time, especially Sarah Jane, but it was mostly me and Mickey, Craig and Sophie, and Clara and Jack."

"Oh, to be a fly on  _that_  wall!" the Doctor exclaims, his voice full of forced, too-hearty cheer. "I'm quite the matchmaker, apparently!"

Now  _he's_  pretending to be fascinated by a hanging fern and Clara's staring at him, her mouth twisted in a befuddled frown. It's like they can only look at each other when the other's not looking at them... the world's least terrifying, most ludicrous Weeping Angels.

Martha shakes her head. "Clara, this was your turn to pay, right?"

Clara nods.

"Right, then… I'm out." Martha sets her napkin aside, gathers her purse. "Call me soon, okay? Thanks for lunch."

Martha makes it five steps towards the restaurant's exit before turning on her heel and striding back, leaning over to plant both palms on the table with a thud.

"Couldn't let it go after all. You two need to sort this out,  _now_. Go back to Clara's and have a proper, honest chat, because this is ridiculous."

The Doctor opens his mouth to protest, but Martha shuts him up with a brandished finger in his face.

" _Not_  done, Mister, and I've  _earned_  this rant, thank you very much. Spent quite a while holdin' your tissue box while you pined for the  _last_  diem you didn't carpe, and unless you've got another human clone in a drawer somewhere, you'll have to handle this yourself."

She straightens, adjusting her jacket and looking slightly sheepish. "Well, that was all, so, um... enjoy the rest of your lunch."

Clara and the Doctor watch her walk away, equally dumbstruck.

" _Martha Smith-Jones_ ," Clara breathes, somewhere between shock and awe.

"Oh, believe me, I remember," the Doctor murmurs. "Shakespeare had  _quite_  the crush."

* * *

"So," Clara finally says as they're walking back to her flat, "How much did you hear, then?"

The Doctor kicks a pebble into a nearby flowerbed. "Can't believe you named me  _Captain Fez_. That is  _not_  cool."

"So, all of it.  _Lovely_." Clara shoves her fists into the pockets of her jacket. "Just so you know,  _Captain Fez_  is Craig's fault. He had his heart dead-set on some really long thing you called yourself once... Captain Roy or Troy or..."

" _Captain Troy Handsome of International Rescue_ ," the Doctor says, unable to suppress a brief grin.

Clara inclines her head. "That'd be the one. Too long for everyday use, though, so we compromised. And you do love that fez."

"I do love that fez," he admits, sending another pebble flying. "Can't  _find_  it, though."

"You gave it away the day we met, remember? But the one I got you for Christmas is in my guest room, if you want it."

He stops in his tracks, his face lighting up. "You get me a new fez for Christmas?"

"Oh,  _hell_  — I've ruined the surprise!" she swears, then frowns. "Or wait, have I? That  _thing_  Martha mentioned, that Malkovich Effect. Are you going to forget all this?"

" _Blinovitch Limitation Effect_. And... I don't know. If my next incarnation shows up, then I almost certainly will." The Doctor's expression sours. "And, as you  _mentioned_ , I'd remember everything later."

Clara's cheeks flame, recalling exactly  _what_  she and Martha had discussed him remembering later. "Right. Well. Good to keep in mind, then."

They walk in silence for a few awkward moments.

"Clara... if you gave me the fez for Christmas, why is it in your guest room?"

"God, how in the hell does River  _do_  this? I know I'm not supposed to tell you spoilers, but you're going to  _see_  the bloody room soon enough." She turns towards him with a resigned sigh. "Look, it's not so much a 'guest room' as it is... well...  _your_  room. Not that you've ever used it, mind, just that I've got all your stuff in it. The fez, that cowboy hat with the bullet hole, all your bow ties, even your monk robe. And Doctor... you  _can't_  ask me why, you just  _can't_."

"Okay," the Doctor shrugs, and keeps walking.

Clara has to stand there and blink seven times before she scurries to catch up with him. "Okay? Really? Just... okay? After all that sneaky interrogation you were doing this morning?"

"Don't need to know," the Doctor chirps. "Plus it's quite convenient, really. Never know when you'll need a fresh Stetson."

Clara's eyes narrow. "You look  _smug_. Smug is only good when it's directed at something trying to kill us. Otherwise, it means I'll want to punch you soon."

"Clara Oswald, self-described as  _the third wheel_ ," the Doctor crows, intoxicated with his own cleverness. "Discusses my supposedly-dead wife _in the present tense_! Ha-ha! I've got it, haven't I?"

He twirls around a road sign, looking up at the sky. "Oi, River Song, you bad, bad girl! Should have known you had a few more tricks up your sleeve!"

He does a little victory hop back onto the sidewalk, noting in confusion that Clara is no longer beside him.

She is, in fact, about four meters behind him... completely ignoring him and texting on her cellphone.

" _Claraaaaaaaaa_ ," the Doctor whines, "I was just the Sherlock Holmes of verb conjugations, and you completely missed it."

Her head snaps up, and she flicks her phone case closed with one precise motion. "Oh, I didn't miss anything."

Something about her clipped, Mary Poppins tone is setting off a million alarm bells inside the Doctor's head.

"Who were you texting?" he asks suspiciously.

She barrels past him on the sidewalk without a glance. "Craig and Sophie."

"Why?"

"Because you're staying with  _them_  until the TARDIS comes back."

" _What?_ " He runs a bit, arms akimbo, to catch up with her. " _Why?_ "

She fixes him with a laser glare. " _You're_  the Sherlock Holmes of verb conjugations. Why don't  _you_  figure it out."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He gapes at her. "That shouldn't have happened."
> 
> "You're right," she smiles.
> 
> But it's a bad smile, a bad-secret smile, the kind worn by people waiting until after your birthday party to tell you that your puppy's died. He hates it on Clara's face.

"Clara!" the Doctor yells. "Clara, stop… wait!"

Clara has blazed past him, power-walking in the direction of her flat without looking back. Even the bounce of her  _hair_  seems piqued.

He takes off at a jog after her. "Clara, don't send me to Craig and Sophie's,  _please_ , the whole place smells of nappies…"

She shoots an even-more-outraged glare over her shoulder, and he winces.

"... Which, of course, is  _not_  my primary reason. Please, Clara… I want  _you_ , I want to stay with  _you_."

She whirls on him, and he flinches in anticipation… but her temper is gone, replaced by a wet-eyed look of misery that makes him open his arms to her.

"Clara, come here."

She shakes her head in fast little motions, like a child.

"Oh, for God's sake, Clara, come  _here_ …"

She's backing away even as he's reaching for her, and he stumbles into an awkward, off-balance lurch.

He grabs for her to keep from falling…

And just for a moment, he sees a flash of green and black, feels a gut-stab of humiliation. A familiar, yet unpleasantly condescending voice: " _You might as well flirt with a mountain range."_

Clara helps him steady himself, then straightens his bow tie and pats it.

"I know it was an accident," she says in too-polite tone. "But please avoid reading my mind as much as you can."

He gapes at her. "That shouldn't have happened."

"You're right," she smiles.

But it's a  _bad_  smile, a  _bad-secret_  smile, the kind worn by people waiting until after your birthday party to tell you that your puppy's died. He hates it on Clara's face.

"It's just a thing to watch out for," Clara adds. "My mind's a little easier to read than most, especially when I'm distracted."

"Since when?"

She bites her lip. "Since… things happened."

There's room for a million unpleasant possibilities inside that word, "things", and the Doctor shakes his head when too many of them attack him at once.

"If there's been some… damage done. In your…" he whirls his finger in the direction of his scalp awkwardly. "I could help you fix it, you know."

"But you'd have to go in…" Clara mirrors his finger-swirl around her own head. Then, fiercely: "And you're  _never_  going in there."

He freezes on the sidewalk, stung by her vehemence.

"Clara," he says slowly, "Do you trust me?"

It takes her a while to answer. "After a fashion."

"After a fashion," he echoes.

He must look as stricken as he feels, because she seems to take pity.

" _Your_ Clara... in your normal time... she trusts you completely."

"So...  _she's_  'my' Clara, then. And you... aren't."

They share a grim, lingering look.

"I can't explain. You know that," she finally says.

He nods.

"Look, I'll text Craig and tell him not to come." She digs in her purse, extracting her phone. "I'm sorry about before. I was being immature and unfair."

"Well… all right…" he takes a tentative step towards her. "But for the record,  _you_  said that, not me..."

"No,  _you_  let me get away with it.  _He_  never would." She looks skyward, takes a deep breath. "I just can just hear him now in my head, calling me a petulant child… and  _this_  time, at least, he'd be right."

"So you don't mind if I stay?"

"No, I…" she shakes her head. "I know things have gone all weird, but honestly, I'm thrilled you're here. You don't know how much. I don't want to fight, I don't want to talk about horrid things, I just…"

She closes the distance between them, reaching out and twining her fingers through his. "This will sound silly, but… what I want, what I  _really_  want, is just… a little holiday in the way things used to be. Back when you and I were running."

"But, Clara... we can't. The TARDIS is gone."

"I don't miss the TARDIS," Clara says. "I mean, I do, a bit. The adventure was fun. But now that it's all over, I know that being with you was the part I liked best of all."

This time, she doesn't protest when he gathers her to him. He slides his fingers into her hair, cupping her head against his chest, feeling her arms wind around his waist. They both sigh, and he presses a kiss to her scalp.

"All right, Clara," he breathes against her forehead. "That's what we'll do, then. No more questions, no more fighting. We'll have ourselves a holiday."

* * *

He'd tried so very, very hard to keep that promise.

They'd done a few touristy things, then walked along the Thames with ice cream cones. Clara had tutted about how unhealthy his was (seven scoops with every topping… full of perfectly nutritious glucose)... and, for a while, it really had felt like how things had been in what Clara knew as "years ago" and he considered "yesterday".

But behind his mask of childlike enjoyment, his mind had been humming and whirring... turning every piece of information around and around, trying to fit it into the bigger puzzle.

It shouldn't have been possible for him to regenerate again… but since he  _had_ , some kind of Time Lord technology must have been involved. Perhaps some kind of Time Lord artifact?

And  _what_  artifact, and how did  _River_  fit into all of this? Finding artifacts seemed a fairly archaeologist-y thing to do, but... where could she have possibly found a Gallifreyan one? Even River wasn't reckless enough to breach the Time Lock...

When it occurs to him, he nearly drops his ice cream.

There  _is_  one Time Lord artifact that can control regeneration energy.

One artifact that might have gladly extended his lifespan, since it considered his continued existence a prison sentence.

One artifact with a psychic interface capable of tearing Clara's mental shields to shreds.

One artifact that could have survived the destruction of Gallifrey and avoided the Time Lock...  _because it caused them._

_The Moment._

Even thinking its name makes him want to keen with despair.

It's always been difficult for the Doctor to recall actually  _using_  the Moment. He's not certain if it's a side-effect of the device itself or a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome, but his memory of that dark day is full of odd patches and glitches.

He remembers that the psychic interface took the form of a blonde woman... but over the centuries, his shifting memory has morphed that woman into Rose Tyler, which of course isn't possible. Made odd sense, though; he'd met the real Rose not long after.

What had he  _done_  with the Moment, afterwards? He remembers landing on the desert moon, remembers carrying the Moment in a bulging sack, like the Father Christmas of unthinkable genocide.

_And then what?_  He'd regenerated at some point, obviously, probably from the Moment's detonation. The Moment's unique payload  _should_  have swept away all his remaining regenerations in an instant, but she'd warned him that wouldn't happen; survival was his punishment.

Wait a bloody minute.

_Survival was his punishment._

What if the Moment had given him more regenerations  _right then_? Perhaps even an infinite supply, to ensure that he never escaped his sentence?

But no, no,  _that_  couldn't be possible, he'd nearly died for good in Berlin before River had intervened.

But then... he hadn't  _tried_  to regenerate in Berlin, had he? He'd just assumed he wouldn't be able to.

And if  _that_  were true...

Oh,  _River_.

She'd given him all her remaining regenerations... for nothing.

Clara tugs on his sleeve. "Doctor? You've got... issues."

Indeed he does, but he blinks and sees what she means: his ice cream's melted all over his hand and wrist, puddling into his sleeve all the way to his elbow.

"Sorry, Clara. Just a bit... lost in thought."

"Mmm-hmm. Figured  _that_  out when you stopped speaking or moving five minutes ago."

Clara plucks the soggy cone from his fingers and tosses it in a nearby waste bin. "Let's go home, yeah? It's tea-time anyway, and I've got clothes of yours you can change into."

He follows her sheepishly, his shame at failing to keep up the holiday pretense a little underwhelming when placed next to  _I got my wife killed... more than once._

He forces his memory back to that desert moon outside Gallifrey, tries to will his recollection to sharpen. The regeneration didn't help matters; he was always confused and sometimes outright amnesiac after those.

He'd wandered confused in the desert for a while, hadn't he? He remembers terrible thirst, the relentless heat, and eventually following a set of footprints that had led him back to the TARDIS.

He focuses on that moment, when his sun-blistered palms had pressed against the blue doors...

_Both_  palms against the blue doors.

Nothing in his hands. No sack.

_He'd flown off and left the most dangerous weapon in the universe sitting in an old barn._

He feels a new shock of guilt, then considers: maybe that had actually been for the best. He'd been to the end of time, after all, and there'd been no mention of the Moment ever having been used again. All the Time Lords were gone, and to anyone else who stumbled upon it, the Moment would have just been an interesting-looking box that didn't do anything.

Just a...  _box_.

_Save Donna Noble,_ Clara's tattoo said.  _Blue box in Clara's guest room._

He  _wouldn't_  have... or would he? He's not exactly pleased with the things he's learned about his next incarnation, but surely even  _that_  version of him wouldn't leave the sodding  _Moment_ in Clara Oswald's flat.

The actual workings of the Moment were unknown even to him, but he knew the psychic interface responded to nearby sources of Artron energy.

Like Clara.

_And Donna_.

Both soaked with Artron energy, both living in the same part of London.

Both of them with mental shields that had begun to malfunction.

Which led to yet another question - why would Future Him create this mess and leave it for Past Him to clean up?

Clara stops suddenly outside a tiny shop. "We could pick up some things for tea, if you like. I've got custard at home, and this place sells fish fingers."

He nods and follows her inside, a smile ghosting over his lips as he watches her scan the aisle. She's biting her lip in concentration, carefully filling her basket with a selection of candies and biscuits he's praised before.

It's an odd, sweet trait of Clara's: whenever she learns of something he likes, she files it away forever.

He finds it so endearing, he can't bear to tell her that fish fingers make him terribly sad now. Eating them without Amy feels like a fruitless attempt to summon the dead.

As if to mock his thoughts, a teenaged girl blows past in a swirl of long ginger hair. He watches for too long as that bright fire recedes, disappearing behind a display of fizzy drinks.

When he turns back to Clara, she's watching him with a sympathetic expression.

"This enough, you think?" she asks, holding up her basket of sugary treats. They haven't reached the aisle with fish fingers yet.

"It's perfect," he smiles.  _My impossibly perceptive, Impossible Girl. What could have happened in the future to make me let you go?_

Of course... he hadn't let  _Amy_  go willingly, either.

_Was that the answer?_

What if Future Him was locked out of  _this_  place and time as thoroughly as he himself had been locked out of Depression-era New York?

This accidental visit - which Future Him would certainly remember - would have been built into that fixed point when it was created. It would be like a back door, a loophole in the rules... his one-shot opportunity to sneak in and fix things.

Clara finishes at the till, and he takes the shopping bags. She slips her arm through his, and they head off in the direction of her flat.

It feels a bit like playing house, the kind of domesticity that normally makes him run screaming… but it's not too bad, for a bit, when it's just for pretend.

_And when it's with Clara._

He wads up that thought and drop-kicks it out of his consciousness.

If his latest theory is correct, then he's on the verge of losing Clara in the same excruciating way he lost the Ponds. And the worst part is, this time,  _he'll know it's coming._

With  _that_  in mind, everything he's heard about Future Him makes perfect sense; he's self-aware enough to know how he acts when he's in a very particular type of pain.

He'd lied to Clara - a little - about the content of the tattoo's message. The whole thing had been perfectly legible, if a little oddly phrased due to the limitations of the ambigram. There'd just been one part he'd been too embarrassed to translate:

_KISS HER, you gamboling idiot! This fixed point belongs to you._

That "this fixed point belongs to you" bit hadn't made sense at the time, but he supposes it does now.

In a rush, he's overwhelmed with the sadness of it all. It's far too easy to imagine himself, older and filled with even more regret, simultaneously treasuring each remaining day with Clara and distancing himself in a futile attempt to avoid some of the pain when he loses her.

What had that older man felt, watching that tattoo's bloody birth on the fine skin of Clara's wrist? A message for the man he had been, a plea to at least leave him with one faded, sweet memory?

"Doctor?" Clara asks, her arm rising to thumb his cheekbone. "Are you all right?"

He catches her hand, kisses it. "I've ruined our holiday, haven't I?"

She smiles, shrugs a little. "I've been thinking, too. Quite hard not to. No worries."

"If it's all right, then, I think I'd like to have a look at that box."

She nods. "Just give me a minute to check the room first… make sure there's not anything in it you shouldn't see."

* * *

He stands outside the door while she rummages around, listening to her rustles and muttering… which turn into a startled cry as a cascade of thumping noises ends in a crash of broken glass.

He's on the move in a second, bursting in and finding Clara half-buried under a stack of cardboard boxes. She's cradling one hand in the other, and he sees to his horror that blood is seeping from between her fingers.

"It's not as bad as it looks," she says nervously, her eyes darting around the room. "Doctor, you really oughtn't..."

He's only half-listening, picking up the shards scattered on the floor before they can injure Clara further. He finds the source of the glass… a framed photo that he begins stacking the shards on.

"Doctor, you  _really_ …"

And he shouldn't look, he shouldn't, but he does… and then lifts the photo up, brushing the shards aside.

"Wait, I  _know_  this fellow. Met him in Rome, I think… or was it Pompeii? Somewhere toga-ish, at any rate. Doesn't explain why he's dressed up like a magician... and I don't know  _this_  bloke at all." He wiggles the frame. "Why'd you want to hide  _this_  from me?"

"Well, that one's Danny," Clara says after a long pause. "And, ah, you haven't met him yet, so I thought… anyway, not important, just pass it here..."

"He's holding my sonic," the Doctor says quietly. "The magician-y one."

Clara's eyes go huge.

"This is  _me_ , isn't it? Mr. Pickle, or whatever you lot call me now."

Clara doesn't answer, but she doesn't really need to. He stares at the photograph, pulling the shards of broken glass from the frame and flicking them into the waste bin.

"I look  _cross_. I bet no one goes wandering off on  _that_  face. Oh, and all that grey... people must think I'm your granddad."

"Sometimes," she reluctantly admits. "That photo doesn't do you justice, though; you're quite handsome. I always missed this face, though."

He frowns a little. "Because it's young?"

"Because it's  _yours_.  _This_  you. I mean… you're always  _you_ , of course, but you're always a little different, too." She bites her lips, tries to think of the right words.

And finally, she finds them. "Maybe it's just this, Doctor. There are echoes of me scattered across the universe, yeah? Copies of me have crossed your path a million, billion times. And all those other versions of you… none of them ever took me with them, did they? Most of them never even noticed me."

She shoots him a small smile. " _You_  were the one who finally saw me,  _you_  were the one who finally chose me… not just once, but three different times. Don't know if it's chemistry or personality or what, but something about  _this_  you and me, it just… well, I could be totally wrong of course, but  _I_  thought it was a bit… special?"

He should move. He should speak. He should

_(KISS HER, you gamboling idiot!)_

… do  _something_ , at least. Watching her confidence drain away during the last part of her speech had hurt his hearts.

When the silence grows too awkward, Clara forces a laugh. "Look at me, just sitting here bleeding on everything. I'll go tend to this. I suppose you can go ahead and look around; the worst has been done."

* * *

He does look around, and that's when he realizes.

There are grimmer things than going to your own grave.

He'd say the little room is like a museum, but he  _enjoys_  museums. They've usually got fragments of past triumphs he can brag about, and he's always been fond of a bit of bragging.

This is far more personal… and far more depressing.

It's a small room to begin with, tucked under such sharp eaves that he can only comfortably stand in the center. It would have made a nicely-sized office for a tiny thing like Clara, but the double bed shoved beneath the window takes up almost all the available space.

The bed is covered in a quilt, yellowed with age and ragged about the edges from heavy use. He's never seen it before, yet something about the combination of colors and fabrics tugs unpleasantly at the edges of his memory.

But there's worse things here to discover. His jackets and coats are in the closet, bearing dry-cleaner's tags and shrouded in tissue and plastic. His hats are carefully packed away in boxes, his boots neatly lined up and filled with cedar shoe trees; on a small metal tie rack, the bowtie he's currently wearing hangs tidily alongside all the others.

Somehow, the meticulousness with which Clara's stored his things makes it all the more horrible. There's a finality to it that burns; this isn't a closet, it's a mausoleum for a man who leaves no body behind to bury.

The morbidness of it all spurs him to action; he feels a compulsive need to  _do_  something, and decides to clean up the stack of fallen boxes.

The top one has spilt a bit upon impact; he sees a bright-red sleeve poking out, and then notices with a sinking heart that the box is marked "AMY".

He pulls on the sleeve until the whole shirt comes free, then crumples it beneath his nose. Beneath the mothballs, beneath the dust, beneath Clara's lavender-y laundry soap, there is his glorious Pond. He breathes deeply, tears stinging at the edges of his eyes, before replacing the shirt in the box.

There are three other boxes marked "Amy", too, and two more marked "Rory". They contain exactly what the Doctor had expected, yet feared: all of their clothing and personal items from their room on the TARDIS.

But why…  _why_?

If it had just been  _his_  things, he could have told himself that Clara'd asked to keep them for sentimental reasons. But aside from their one brief encounter with Oswin, Clara hadn't known the Ponds at all.

That suggested that his future incarnation had purged the TARDIS of all evidence that his current one had ever existed.

Which was something he'd done before… but only once.

_No, no. If he's renounced me like I've renounced… the one that wasn't the Doctor… there's no way he'd be ordering me to get all smoochy with Clara. There's some other explanation. And have you noticed there's no box marked "River"?_

This. Is. Driving. Him. Mad.

He's seized with the sudden impulse to grab Clara up and rip the contents of the last six years out of her head... to have every question answered, all the swirling uncertainties put to rest... to  _know_ , dammit, to  _know_.

He's  _never_  been built to tolerate mysteries; they're the things he can't resist poking with sticks, the things that keep him running from planet to planet, the things that keep him living on, on past all the heartache and loss and the age that hangs ever-heavier on his shoulders.

_And it'd be easy_ , the darker part of his mind hisses.  _So easy, even easier than usual. Clara's mental shields aren't working, anyway..._

He shakes his head as if to knock the thought off. Clara was already having trouble trusting him...

_It may even be what HE wants,_ the insistent little voice continued.  _He did tell you to kiss her, didn't he? He even marked it as especially important. If you got Clara's thoughts from one brief, accidental touch, imagine what a connection like_ that  _would do…_

The Doctor swallows hard. There were dual temptations there, equally tantalizing and forbidden… the answers he shouldn't have, and the soft, sweet mouth that had haunted his thoughts for months.

But Clara didn't  _want_  that. He'd heard her tell Martha so earlier.

And for that matter, she'd told  _him_  that he was never allowed in her mind.

The voice shoots one final volley:  _What if reading Clara's mind is the only way to save Donna?_

"I can't," he whispers to the air. "I can't, I can't, I can't…"

Behind him, Clara's voice: "Thanks for cleaning up. Sorry, I was going to do that myself."

He whirls awkwardly. Clara's plastered up her hand and changed for bed, and his tongue darts out to wet his suddenly-too-dry lips.

There's nothing especially provocative about this new outfit… just shorts and an old t-shirt… but even the sight of her small, bare feet is doing things to his thoughts that he does and doesn't appreciate.

He really needs to start wearing baggier trousers.

"You're, ah… off to bed, then?"

"I'd gotten blood on my dress, needed to soak it," she shrugs. "Did you find your things? Thought you'd want to get that ice cream off... assuming you weren't already lost for the evening, investigating that blue box."

_The blue box. The possibly planet-eating blue box. He'd actually forgotten about the blue box!_

He yelps and turns; the blue box is smack-dab in front of his face on the bookshelf, and he takes it in his hands.

It certainly doesn't  _seem_  like a planet-eating weapon of mass destruction.

It's TARDIS blue, as he'd basically expected, and quite light... roughly the size of a shoebox and made of wood, with a hinged top and what appears to be a simple keyed lock.

He turns it back and forth. "Have you tried opening it?"

She chuckles. "I held out about a month... then, yeah. My first thought was the TARDIS key…"

"Naturally..."

"But it doesn't even fit the hole. Was afraid to jimmy it  _too_  much, in case it was booby-trapped."

He scans it with the sonic, then lets out a long sigh of relief. "It's only semi-sentient."

"Oh,  _only_ ," Clara teases, stepping closer. "Some kind of psychic interface?"

He files  _that_  interesting assumption away for later. "Sort of, yes, but very low-level. The keyhole's just camouflage; the real lock's waiting for something to happen."

She nibbles her thumb. "Like what?"

"Could be anything, really. A spoken phrase, a certain date, a particular type of weather."

"Huh." Clara moves even closer, her fingertips rising to delicately trace the ridges of the lock.

His mind's heading to dangerous places again at her new closeness, the scent and heat of her fogging his thoughts, his eyes torn between her gentle caressing of the box and the appealing curve of her lower lip.

She looks up, and their gaze locks and holds. Almost imperceptibly, they lean in towards each other...

And the lock lets out an audible _click._


	5. Chapter 5

_Click_.

They spring apart, both pointing at the box with a simultaneous yelp.

"Did it open, then?" Clara asks.

He tries the lid, shakes his head, and tucks the box into the crook of his elbow so he can sonic it again.

"Not  _open_ , not entirely... but that click we heard was a pin lifting into place, like something invisible was picking the lock. It's fallen back down, now." He stuffs the sonic back into his jacket, sets the box back on the shelf. "Curious..."

"Well… I was touching it. Maybe I should do that again?"

Off his  _go-ahead_  nod, she tries rubbing the lock again. Nothing happens.

"Maybe we  _both_  have to touch it," she guesses. "You were holding the box, before. That makes sense, right, if it was waiting for us to be back together?"

They try it. Nothing.

He holds out his hand. "We were touching each other as well, weren't we?"

She doesn't think they were — well, they definitely had been  _inside her mind_ , and she feels her ears getting a little hot at the memory — but she takes his hand anyway.

Nothing happens.

"Think, think,  _think_ ," he mutters to himself, rapping on his forehead. "What was different?"

_Well, for a moment,_ Clara thinks,  _I actually thought you were about to kiss me, and my mind went to all sorts of interesting places... like us forgetting all about that box, and how incredibly close that bed is..._

And they hear it again:  _Click._

Clara's face flames, but the Doctor doesn't notice; he's doing a little jig of excitement. "Clara, whatever you did, do it again!"

_No. No. Branston Pickle can be a bastard at times, but he's not insensitive enough to do_ this  _to me. He knew how humiliated I was when..._

"Claraaaaa," the Doctor whines, "Do it again! We're onto something!"

Maybe she's wrong. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

So she screws her eyes shut, rifling through her embarrassingly large mental catalogue of fantasies and selecting the most potent. This one actually had some sense memory to back it up...

_She's back on Trenzalore, shivering in the snow, and the Doctor wraps his arms around her from behind, spoons into her in an attempt to warm her._

_The sudden shock of skin against skin reminds her that they're actually both naked, and she feels the Doctor tense when he realizes it too._

_He tries to pull away, but she presses back into him..._

"Oh, well  _done_ , Clara! Two pins, that time! All right, quick, tell me what you're doing so I can do it too. We'll make short work of this with both of us..."

She takes back everything nice she has ever said about Branston Pickle in her entire lifetime. Making  _this_  the pass code — especially after what happened to her on Thalaxis — proves that he is a rotten, heartless bastard.

If she ever sees him again, she is going to rip his attack eyebrows right off and  _shove them down his throat_  for putting her in this situation.

She sorts through all her options — lying, distraction, picking a fight, leaping out the window — and determines that they're all either fatal or only temporarily effective.

So on mad, desperate impulse... she seizes the hem of her t-shirt, and flashes him.

_CLICK-CLICK-CLICK-CLICK!_

"How many pins was  _that_?" she smirks.

The Doctor goes bone white, then blood red; his hands start flapping around like angry doves tied to his elbows.

"You mean it... the lock is... we think of... or do we..." he sputters, briefly losing control of his knees and sagging precariously.

Clara feels quite a bit better now. She crosses her arms and grins.

"You showed me your... things!" he screeches accusingly, flailing his pointer fingers in her direction.

"Oh, calm down, you've seen them plenty before."

"I most certainly have  _not!"_

She claps her hand over her mouth. "Sorry! Spoilers!"

His eyes widen in surprise... narrow again in speculation... then flare with heat.

She's never admitted to him how much she actually  _loves_  it when he gets a little smug... those bursts of confidence that transform him from a hyperactive boy to a swaggering, throaty-voiced man.

"Seen them  _plenty_ , eh?" he smirks, pushing his hair back.

"Might have done," she replies airily.

_Click._

He gives the bookshelf dust a far-too-casual sweep with his finger. "Suppose it involved some life-or-death scenario with jumper-eating acidy goo?"

"Nope." She pops the 'p' for emphasis.

He's coming closer and closer, his voice dropping lower. "And I was a perfect gentleman, of course."

She flashes a coy little grin. "Wouldn't necessarily say that."

_Click._

He's closed the distance between them... his fingers curling down her cheek, his thumb sweeping across her bottom lip. Her heart stops…

Suddenly, the blaze in his eyes falters. "But… but Clara, you told Martha. No lines crossed, not  _ever_ , and you were... you were  _grateful_  for that."

The dizzying potential between them snaps, his hand falls away, and Clara feels frustration rise up and choke her. She's never felt so tempted to throw an old-fashioned temper tantrum, complete with kicking and punching the floor.

"Which one wasn't true, Clara?" he asks quietly, searching her eyes.

"Well... they're  _both_  true, actually. Lines were… approached, but not crossed."

"Because of…"

"Ugh, I don't know...  _everything_ , like a universe-wide conspiracy?" She throws up her hands with a groan. "Weeping angels, weather conditions… my Gran? Or maybe you  _ditching_  me after you'd  _spanked my bum_  while you were  _naked_  in front of  _my whole bloody family_  on  _Christmas_!"

She claps both hands over her mouth this time… and so does he, seconds before he explodes in laughter.

"Believe me, it was  _not_  as funny as it might sound," she mutters sourly, but he's guffawing too loudly to hear her.

" _Spanked_  you... on your  _bum_ … in front of your  _Gran_?"

He's right back to being twelve years old, and Clara frowns. " _And_  my Dad. And my horrid stepmum. It was not a good day."

He can't hold back the giggles.

"It's  _not_  funny!" she insists. "It was terrible! They tried to send me to therapy! I had to tell my whole family you were a Swedish nudist!"

He brays like a donkey at that one, bending down to clutch his knees.

"Starkers," he gasps, "And  _spanking_... in front of your...  _blimey_ , Clara, if that  _didn't_  cross a line, where exactly do you  _keep_  yours, naughty thing?"

"You don't know... it's  _not_  funny!" she scowls.

"On what possible planet is  _that_  not funny."

"The horrible one where you  _died_  that day!" she blurts.

"Oh,  _Clara_ ," he breathes, all the mirth instantly draining from his face.

"Oh, God, I've gone and done it," she moans. "Opened my mouth in the worst possible way. I really should have sent you to Craig's, I should have, before I could..."

The Doctor wraps her in his arms. "Clara, ssh, it's all right. I'd figured out it was soon, anyway."

"But it's  _not_ , not for  _you_... and I shouldn't tell you  _that_ , either!"

He kisses her forehead, and she can't seem to make her mouth stop.

"It's just... things seemed... y'know... headed in a particular direction," she says against his chest. "And I was... excited, hopeful. Seems so silly now, but... I had butterflies in my stomach all the time, the  _good_  ones, like I was on the verge of something so, so wonderful..."

He squeezes her a little tighter.

"And then  _you_  were gone, and  _he_  didn't... all  _that_  was suddenly gone, too. I thought they'd understand... Vastra, Jenny... but everyone was...  _angry_  at me for grieving,  _judging_  me, like I was some... shallow little twit with a boy-band crush, pining for something she'd never actually been important enough to have..."

He remembers the flash he'd gotten from Clara earlier: the humiliation, the lecture he now recognizes was from Vastra... and he flares with anger on Clara's behalf.

"I didn't care that you had a new  _face_ ," Clara whispers. "I cared that you didn't  _care_ , not like you used to. And eventually... I really did think I'd invented it all in my head, just  _wishing_  so much..."

He cups Clara's face in both his hands, and kisses her.

Neither of them hears the box open. The kiss is sweet, but restrained and brief... and afterwards, he leans his forehead against hers.

"Whatever they said, Clara. Whatever  _I_  said. Believe me, you  _didn't_  just imagine it. I don't know what happened between us, but I promise you... if there  _was_  an uncrossed line, then I wanted to cross it. Hell, I wanted to go leaping right over it. I wanted that  _very_  much."

Clara lets this wash over her… a soothing balm for a very old wound.

She gathers up her courage. "Well… you're here. I'm here. We could, y'know. Cross it  _now_."

He closes his eyes as if in pain, then gathers her hands up in his. "Clara,  _your shields_. I've managed to be careful so far, but if we... if I lost control, and I..."

He sighs, rubbing her hands with his thumbs. "Oh, Clara, I  _would._ You don't know how long I spent searching for you, how...  _consumed_  I became. There's always been something about you, Clara Oswald... even your echoes. I  _would_  lose control, and when I did, you... I'm so sorry, but you wouldn't be able to keep me out of your mind."

She bites her lip. "So if we did...  _cross the line_ , you'd learn so much about the future..."

"That I'd forget  _everything_ , yes." He moves a lock of her hair away from her face. "I  _might_  remember coming here — probably not — but I definitely wouldn't remember any, ah,  _crossing bits_. Not until I'd caught up with all the time I'd seen inside your head… and that would mean..."

The Doctor's face falls, and Clara blinks. "Doctor, what is it?"

"That I'd remember this… the moment after you left me for good." He drops her hand, his own rising in an echoed farewell. "I'd watch you walk out the doors of the TARDIS, and when they closed behind you forever…  _I'd finally remember this_."

His eyes shine wet in the room's dim lamps. "Oh, Clara. How that would hurt."

"But it  _won't_  hurt. It won't even be  _you_ ," she says, taking his hand again. "You'll be  _him_  by then, and everything will feel different. Believe me, if he ever remembers  _anything_  like this, he'll vomit in a waste-bin afterwards and wash the taste out with whiskey."

The Doctor mouths "Whiskey?" in horror.

" _Yes_ ," Clara says firmly. "He  _likes_  whiskey _._  He  _doesn't_  like fezzes, or bow-ties... or ever, ever,  _ever_  touching me."

She guides his hand beneath her shirt, to the bare skin of her stomach. "But  _you_  like touching me, don't you?"

He nods quickly, swallowing hard.

"I've… probably learned too much already," he babbles nervously. "Saw my next face, the new comfy sofa, know there's a fantastic sale on avocados at the Waitrose…"

She nods, shifting closer so that his hand slides upwards, grazing the elastic of her bra.

"This is probably part of the fixed point anyway, and…" he breaks off, gasping. "Oh,  _SOD IT_."

He crushes Clara to him, his lips claiming hers with near-bruising force. She moans against his mouth, flinging her arms around his neck…

And it explodes into his mind:  _Gallifrey._

He reels back, hitting the bed with his knees and sitting down hard, gaping at Clara in dumbfounded shock.

" _I didn't do it_ ," he stammers. "All those people, all those  _children_ , and I  _didn't_ … Clara, I'm sorry, but this is… this is  _massive_..."

Clara fights to get her breath under control, then sits on the bed next to him.

"Not going to work, is it," she says flatly.

He shakes his head, too overwhelmed to speak.

"Well... we've sorted one thing, at least."

He raises an eyebrow.

"You  _do_  forget this ever happened. There's no way knowing  _that_  wouldn't change your future."

He nods.

"All right… new idea," she declares, offering him her hand. "Go ahead and get the rest. Of  _that_ , anyway. You'll like it, I promise."

He takes a deep breath, and takes her hand.

"Oh,  _Clara_ ," he breathes in awe as her memories reappear. " _You're why_.  _You're_  why I didn't burn Gallifrey, and you always were..."

And suddenly, he  _remembers_  it, too... not just once, but from two different perspectives.

_He remembers her_.

"Sandshoes" had found her charming and attractive… but oh, how "Granddad" had adored her. She'd been that self's first taste of kindness, of gentleness… been the first to really  _see_  him, the first to look into his eyes and recognize no one but the Doctor. How jealous that man had felt of the one with the silly bow-tie, who got to take Clara away with him and keep her.

The old repressed memories unlock and gush into his mind, emotions surging in triplicate: respect, affection, gratitude, love,  _absolution_. He shuts his eyes against the overwhelming force of it, bites his lip to keep from blurting out things he shouldn't.

He's hated himself for so long, rolled and boiled in guilt and shame, that love — no matter how pure — has never quite been able to penetrate. Looking into Rose Tyler's adoring eyes, he'd told himself that she didn't  _really_  know him, could never love the  _real_  him. He'd convinced himself that Rose loved only the mask he wore, not the bloodstains it concealed... and he'd left her on a beach with the closest thing to that mask he could give her.

But  _he hadn't burnt Gallifrey._ He'd found another way, because Clara had believed that he could. She'd met his darkest secret... and brought him tea, and loved him too.

For the first time in centuries, he lets himself accept being known, being cared for. He feels the love drenching all of Clara's memories, allows it to warm him as he watches Past Clara carefully wrap up the new fez she's bought him…

And then it's gone, and he realizes she's pulled her hand from his.

"Let's leave on a high note," she says crisply. "I'll go make our tea."

"Clara... that painting.  _Gallifrey Falls_. Could we go see it again?"

She smiles, standing to head for the kitchen. "I might be able to pull some strings."

"Kate Stewart?" he guesses.

"No, actually." She turns in the doorway. "At the Gallery itself. Sarah Jane married the Curator there."


	6. Chapter 6

"Oh... my...  _God_ ," Clara moans, her head thrown back in ecstasy.

"Showed  _you_ , O Doubting Thomas," the Doctor smirks, spreading his hands wide. "Told you I could cook."

"So Craig said, but you can understand how I'd have concerns." She sips her tea. "I figured it'd be something like chocolate-covered plasma with psychotropic gravity cabbage."

"And now you've ruined the whole surprise of dessert," he mock-scolds, emptying a fistful of sugar cubes into his own teacup. "So, what's on the agenda for tonight, then?"

"Not too much more on my end. Work in the morning. You want to drive me in tomorrow so you can have the motorbike for the day?"

He nods, swallowing a mouthful of biscuit. "I'll need to borrow your mobile as well. Donna's meant to call tomorrow."

Clara starts laughing.

"What?" he asks, bemused.

"This is just so  _weird_. So… domestic and un-you. Tea and omelettes and arranging transport so you can run errands. I keep waiting for some murderous nine-headed beastie to burst in so things get back to normal."

"You should have seen me a few centuries ago. I'd have been crawling the walls by now, and your toaster would be sixth-dimensional." He waggles his half-eaten biscuit in the direction of her kitchen. "Or imploded. Possibly both. Probably both."

"And now?"

"This me's getting  _old_ , really," he sighs. "Been a bit more careful with this body, seeing as I thought it was my last, and I've had a good run of luck, too. Ol' Sandshoes burned an extra regen and didn't make it a fraction as long as I have."

He reaches for another biscuit. "Before I knew this wasn't the end… well… I was only half-kidding about the watercolors and beekeeping, you know. Find a comfy chair to spend a few centuries in and just… whittle or whatnot."

All the color has drained from Clara's face, and he sits up straighter. "What'd I say?"

"Spoiler thing," she smiles wanly.

"Right,  _about_  that." He laces his fingers together on the table and leans over them. "If I'm going to forget all this, what's the harm in me knowing the lot? I could even repair your mental shields, if you'd let me."

"There's quite a difference between me telling you what happened and you mucking about in my private thoughts, Doctor." Clara puts on a teasing tone, tries to lighten it up. "Let a girl keep  _some_  mystery, eh?"

He rolls his eyes at that. "So, are you?"

"Am I what?"

" _Going to tell me_."

"All right," she declares, straightening in her seat. "Ask me about one thing, and I'll tell you right now.  _Just_  one, though, at least for tonight... I really do need to get some sleep."

She expects him to take a while deciding, but his answer is immediate. "Tell me how your shields were compromised."

"That's… difficult," she winces, then holds up a hand before he can protest. "I'll tell you eventually, but… it's not a good starting point. You'd need to know all sorts of other things first for it to make any sense."

"Fine," he pouts, leaning back in his chair. "Tell me why you leave me."

"Again, bad starting point. Tied to the other thing."

He throws his hands up in frustration. "What am I supposed to ask you, then?"

"Well, you can start by asking what you really  _want_  to ask."

"I just did!"

"No, Doctor, you didn't," Clara shakes her head. "Ask me how I know that River's alive."

* * *

"The next you… Branston Pickle… he's always going on about his past mistakes. He's very keen on fixing them, when he can. It's kind of his  _thing_ ," Clara begins.

They've moved to the lounge, where Clara's wrapped herself in a blanket and curled up on one end of the sofa.

The Doctor's crouched in front of the hearth, sonic in hand, doing a bit of molecular re-jigging on some recycling he's stuffed into the firebox. "And he considered River to be one of these...  _mistakes_. Trying not to take that personally; failing a bit."

"He just said it wasn't fair. She'd given up her regenerations for him, and now he had plenty to spare."

He swivels to shake the sonic at her. "Which you haven't explained yet."

"And if you keep interrupting, I'll never get to that part, will I?"

He pulls a chastened schoolboy face and goes back to fiddling with the fireplace.

"Anyway. We visited River when she was unconscious after Berlin. I'm not sure how, but he gave her some regenerations back. She slept through the whole thing, never knew."

Clara hugs her knees. "Then we went to the Library. River  _had_  to die there, to create the data backup and preserve the timeline... but he fiddled with the system to make certain she could still regenerate."

He's lost all interest in starting a fire now, fully focused on Clara's story. "But she  _didn't_  regenerate. Believe me, I was paying attention. There was a flash, and then she... she was just  _gone_."

"And that didn't seem strange?" Clara asks gently. "That her body just... disappeared?

"I forgot parts of it, didn't I," he frowns in realization. "Because  _he_  was there."

Clara nods.

"So she's still running about, then, with a new face on," he muses. "Wonder how many times I've crossed her path and not even known it?"

"You wouldn't remember it if you did. She's always with  _him_. Practically joined at the hip."

There's a sliver of jealousy in Clara's voice, but it pales next to the twin stab in his own gut. "You mean to say... River moved onto the TARDIS?  _Full time_? When  _I_ asked, she turned me down stone cold!"

He flicks the last piece of cardboard into the fireplace with a scowl.

"She'd regenerated, remember? New face, new rules. It was like..."

Clara breaks off, biting her lip.

"Spit it out, Oswald."

"It seemed like she was made... well,  _remade_ , I suppose... just for him. Like those twins that speak their own language. They were so... in sync all the time, the perfect team." She looks down at her hands in her lap. "I guess her past incarnation was like that with  _you_ , too."

He lets out a resounding snort.

"No?" Her tone is mild, casual, but he can tell his answer's important to her.

"Well, she was always  _shooting my hats_ ," he says peevishly. "Me as well, occasionally, but that was more understandable given the circumstances. River was a bit of a... carnival ride."

Clara draws her blanket closer. "Still sounding like your perfect woman."

"I suppose so, in some ways." He pokes the uncooperative cardboard. "We fought as much as we flirted, but that's practically line one of my lonely hearts ad. The thing is, Clara... sometimes, the best part of sledding is coming inside for cocoa afterwards."

"I'm not following."

He abandons the fireplace, stowing the sonic and coming to sit on the edge of the sofa opposite her.

It takes him a while to choose his words.

"I don't always have to change my face... to  _change_. Losing the Ponds… it froze the heart right out of me."

He hangs his head, then continues.

"I asked River to stay, and she wouldn't. Too many psychopaths in the soup, she said."

He steeples his fingers, takes a long breath through them. "I understood, eventually. River -  _that_  River, anyway, I can't speak to the new model - she's not a  _cocoa_  person, the kind who warms you back up when it's gone dark and you're wet and freezing. She's too busy still out sledding."

"So that's when you went to Vastra?" Clara asks.

He barks harsh laughter, settling back on the sofa. "Vastra's not a cocoa person either. You learned that yourself, I think. She's some other beverage entirely... and don't get me started on Strax."

He reaches across and takes her hand. "No, it was  _you_ , Clara.  _You_  were the warmth that thawed me out."

"My echo," Clara says. "The… Victorian governess. I wish I could properly remember."

"Went a bit like this," he smiles, and kisses her gently.

He breaks away, amending: "Although, to be perfectly accurate, I did a lot more flailing about and stuttering the first time."

" _Shut up_ ," Clara laughs, grabbing him by the lapels and yanking him back over.

He kisses her forehead, her eyelids, the tip of her nose. "Easy now, Clara. Can't get too naughty or I'll end up inside..."

He breaks off at the amused, raised-eyebrow expression she's shooting him. " _Your mind_. Inside your  _mind_!"

"Too bad," she breathes across the sensitive skin at his jawline. "If you think  _cocoa's_  good at warming you up, well..."

"That was a perfectly innocent metaphor until you got a hold of it," he chastises primly.

"Good news," Clara purrs, working her hand in between them. "I've found something even more interesting to get a hold of."

" _Clara_!" he yelps. "First off, that's the sonic..."

"That is  _not_  the sonic," she chuckles against his throat.

"It is  _so_  the sonic, and..."

Clara plucks the actual sonic out of his jacket pocket, brandishing it in his face.

"All right, it's not the sonic," he mutters.

She laughs, stretching up to set the sonic screwdriver on the table behind her head.

"Clara, you need to sleep, and I need… to think about cricket, or the helmic regulator."

She yanks the blanket out from between them, tugging it across so it covers him as well. "Or  _you_  could sleep, too. It's been a while, hasn't it?"

He's landed with his cheek on the swell of her breast, with her arms wound around his shoulders; he is rather spectacularly warm and comfortable. "I don't need to sleep."

"But you could. And you should. What are you going to do all night, anyway? I don't need a sixth-dimensional toaster."

"Got to… figure out… Donna," he mumbles, eyelids already getting heavy.

"You'll see her tomorrow, and then you'll actually know something." She brushes his quiff away from his forehead. "Rest now."

He protests. Or he means to; it comes out as a snore.

Clara kisses the top of his head, whispers into his hair: "So I'm your  _cocoa_ , eh? Just the thing to have around on a dark, wet, freezing planet? Why the hell'd you send me  _away_ , then?"

* * *

"Oh,  _this_  is happening already?" Sarah Jane says as she opens the door. "Where does the time go?"

A funny little hiccup of relief goes through his hearts when he sees her. At nearly seventy, Sarah Jane's let her hair go silver, but she still looks sturdy, stylish, and fit.

"Lovely to see you too, Sarah," he grins, then shakes his finger at her. "Although I  _am_  cross you didn't invite me to your wedding."

"Oh, believe me, you were there." She gestures behind her. "Come on in."

He does, spinning to face her. "So... who's the lucky fella? Clara tells me he's a curator?"

"See for yourself." She points to her mantlepiece, where a nest of framed photographs are dominated by a large wedding shot in the center.

He pulls on Amy's glasses, bending at the waist for a better look... then whips around with narrowed eyes and brandished sonic, sweeping the room.

"Sarah Jane Smith, you're far too clever for this sort of nonsense," he scolds, walking up her armchair like a staircase to sonic the ceiling. "I thought we'd already  _had_  the little chat about not marrying Zygons, young lady?"

"He's not a  _Zygon_ ," Sarah Jane laughs, crossing her arms. She seems to find this all quite hilarious. "Goodness, I'd forgotten how  _whirly_  this you is… I'm getting dizzy just watching you."

He gives her a pop-eyed, suspicious squint. "What are you playing at, Sarah?"

"Playing at nothing," she smiles. "What you see is what you get... well, mostly."

"What I  _see_  is...  _me_." He hops off the back of the chair and peers at the photo again, tapping the glass. "Well, a bloke who looks like me. I didn't get this old when I had this face."

"John's human. Old happens."

" _John_ ," he repeats, one eyebrow skyrocketing.

"John Smith." Sarah Jane's lips quirk. "Very convenient. Really cut down on the post-marital paperwork."

"And you don't find any of this just a titchy bit  _creepy_?"

She just rolls her eyes. "How's your visit with Clara going?"

"Oh.  _Fine_. Normal. Friendly," he stammers.

"I only ask because you've got a bit of her necklace stuck in your hair." Sarah Jane waggles her finger at his head.

He slaps around his scalp, retrieving the offending object and stowing it in his pocket. "Perfectly good explanation for that, I assure you, but unfortunately, it's classified... um, by the... imperial government of... Tattooine."

" _Tattooine_." Sarah Jane bites her lip to keep from laughing. "From  _Star Wars_?"

"Based on a true story, I'll have you know. Of course, Ewoks are actually an insectoid warrior race with nine-foot venomous genital tentacles... but the toy licensing there might have been problematic."

She decides to let that one go right on by. "How long are you in town, then?"

"Er, not long. TARDIS has gone sulking off for a bit. Soon as she's back, I'll be on my way."

Sarah Jane sits in the armchair. "That's too bad. I know Clara will miss you terribly."

"Well, I've got… stuff to do, apparently. Bum-slapping, death; my cup overfloweth. And Clara will be fine."

"Will she?" Sarah Jane asks too-casually, crossing her legs.

"Of course! Look at you! Blindingly gorgeous, two lovely children, living happily ever after with a smoking-hot Zygon. Say, any grandkids yet?"

"Luke and his husband have a little boy." She points at the photo-covered mantlepiece again. "But, Doctor..."

"What... a...  _cutie_!" the Doctor over-enthusiastically exclaims, snatching the photo of the toddler up. "Heartbreaker in the making, this one right here..."

" _Doctor_ ," Sarah Jane repeats in her  _don't-you-mess-with-me-I'm-Sarah-Jane-bloody-Smith_ voice. "My children are  _adopted alien weaponry_ , and until they came into my life, I was well on my way to being the neighborhood cat lady."

"Neighborhood  _robot dog_  lady," he corrects, rocking on his heels.

"That's  _not_  actually better."

"Of course it is, that's  _much_  cooler! Where is the old boy, anyway?" He puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles for K-9.

"He's at Luke's, and you're being deliberately obtuse, not to mention childish!" she snaps. "Answer me one question, Doctor. What do Rose Tyler, Clara Oswald, and I have in common?"

"Human, female, British, cheeky," he muses, tapping his chin. "Wander off far too often, the lot of you..."

Sarah Jane gazes to heaven for a patience refill. " _You loved us_ , you old coward...in one incarnation or another. Fortunately for me, in a few more centuries and faces, you're actually mature enough to admit it. How's  _that_  for creating an inescapable fixed point?"

"What are you saying?"

"I didn't marry a Zygon, I married  _you_."

"You said he was human!"

"And you know that's possible."

"So  _another_  older version of me is nancing about this time as well, all human-y, with a recycled face, working for the National Gallery?"

"Which reminds me. That painting you want isn't at the Gallery any longer. It's been moved to a more secure location."

"How'd you know I…" he breaks off, sighing. " _What_  secure location?  _Don't_  tell me it's the sodding Black Archive."

"Oh, it's far more secure than the Black Archive." She points to a staircase that's just visible through the doorway behind her. "Head up the stairs. At the top, you'll see a set of locked double doors."

"And how do I open them?"

"You could always try snapping your fingers," Sarah Jane grins.


	7. Chapter 7

" _Lucy_ ," a posh Estuary accent rings out across the garden. "You've got some 'splainin' to do."

Clara's heart skips, the crisps in her mouth turning to ash.

She sets the bag down on the picnic table next to her packed lunch, swallowing hard. "Hello, Doctor."

He's leaning on the archway between the school's small nature courtyard and the street, motorbike helmet tucked beneath one elbow, leisurely flipping the sonic with his other hand.

A casual observer would describe him as calm, relaxed, and friendly.

But she knows him better than that.

"What an  _interesting_  morning I've had," he declares theatrically. "Visited the missus,  _apparently_ , took in some art, had that phone call from Donna I've been waiting for. Vis-a-vis  _that_ , needed to speak with you quite urgently, so I sought you out at work. Only... I forgot that when I dropped you off this morning, it wasn't at Coal Hill. Meant to ask about that at the time, but I had other things on my mind."

Clara knows what's coming, but she can't seem to make her mouth make sounds.

"So off to Coal Hill I went, looking for you." The Doctor pushes himself off the archway, stalking towards her. "Unexpected stroke of luck... ran into a  _very_  old friend of mine there. Chairman of the Governors, even. A Mr. Ian Chesterton. Always lovely to catch up."

He slams the helmet on the table in front of her, smirking when she jumps in surprise.

"He remembered Clara Oswald quite fondly. Of course, she's not called  _Oswald_  now, is she? Her name's Clara  _Pink_ , and she's happily married and living in Blackpool."

He threads his gangly limbs through the picnic table, sitting across from her and pulling her mobile out of his pocket.

"Handy little device, this. Curiously enough, registered to one  _Lucy Montague_  at your address in Chiswick. Internet-enabled, and wasn't  _that_  convenient. Turns out, unlike the  _real_  Clara Oswald, Miss Lucy Montague works  _right here_." He stabs the picnic table with his finger for emphasis.

He leans across the table, a dangerous look in his eyes. "Feel free to start confessing at any time. I always enjoy that bit."

" _I'm_  the real Clara Oswald," she says.

He snorts. "Oh,  _why_  must you lot  _always_  give it one more go?"

"Oh, right, because that's  _so_  inconceivable," she snaps, temper flaring. "A copy of me! What a completely novel concept!"

Uncertainty flickers in his eyes before they harden again. "Oh, nice try,  _valiant_  effort,  _really_ , but I'm afraid queen and country's on my side with this one… or should I say,  _Clara's_."

He shoves the mobile in her face; the screen shows a scan of a driving license issued to Clara Oswald Pink at a Blackpool address.

He swipes across, and the image changes to a National Insurance Numbercard.

"Here's  _hers_ ," he snarls, then swipes again. "Here's  _yours_. Winner:  _her_."

Two other teachers come out to the nature area with their lunches, shooting inquisitive looks at Clara and her unusual visitor. Clara gives them her widest, fakest smile, and they take the other table.

"I can explain," she hisses at the Doctor, "But  _keep your bloody voice down."_

He ignores her, pulling the phone back and tapping on it. "Ah, social media. So horrid, so useful. Now, here's a lovely snap from just last month of the  _real_  Clara with her Dad. And there she is at Artie's graduation, proud day there, and oh... is that a bridal shower for young  _Angie_  I spy?"

Despite her best efforts to hold them back, tears are forming in Clara's eyes. "Doctor..."

"See, you've made one error here,  _Lucy_ , if that's even your real name... one huge, enormous error. I  _know_  Clara Oswald, and she's got a defining characteristic. She doesn't run out on the people she cares about."

He leans back, crossing his arms in triumph.

"Is this man bothering you, Lucy?"

It's Harold, one of the teachers that came out earlier; he's walked up behind the Doctor and is glaring at him. The Doctor is obviously unworried, content to smirk and point up at Harold smugly when Harold calls her "Lucy".

"I'm fine, Harold, thanks."

Harold looks dubiously between her and the Doctor. "I don't mean to intrude, it's just... you looked like you were about to cry."

"It's fine, Harold, honestly. Just got some bad news."

"All right." With a last distrustful look at the Doctor, Harold returns to his seat.

Clara waits until he's out of earshot, then turns back to the Doctor with blazing eyes.

"I'm  _very_  aware the other Clara has my life, Doctor. She has my family, my friends... she has  _everything._ And guess which meddling,  _Mister Fix-It_  Time Lord is to blame for  _that_?"

His smirk falters just a fraction, but she's not done with him yet. Not  _nearly_.

"You want stories about my past, Doctor? Here's a fun little  _anecdote_. Just picture it — me, you, and River, on a cozy planet called Thalaxis that  _you_  swore was uninhabited. Only,  _oopsie-daisy_ , it's quite inhabited after all. River and I both get captured, they agree to release only one of us… and hey, I bet you can guess which one of us you  _pick_."

She tosses her crisps into her lunch box, slams the lid. "The two of you come back for me later, of course. You're still  _you_. Only, my captors tell you that I'm  _dead_. Vaporized."

He frowns. "I'd never just take their word for it."

"Oh, you don't. Not at first. You  _can't_  believe that I'm dead, because you've already seen my future. It's one of those oh-so-lovely  _fixed points_. Clara Oswald marries Danny Pink, or time as we know it falls apart."

She stuffs her lunch back in her satchel with excessive force. "But then  _River_  reminds you about Lake Silencio, and how you cheated with the Teselecta.  _That's_  when you realize that just because  _one_  Clara Oswald has to marry Danny Pink, it doesn't mean that it has to be the  _original_."

The Doctor's smirk is fully gone now, his eyes widening.

"So you and River start tracking down my echoes… and finally, you find the perfect candidate." Clara shakes her head angrily. " _That_  Clara's already done her job and saved the Doctor, so no harm done  _there_ … and she's from a future so dystopian, she's  _thrilled_  at the prospect of leaving it behind. You get to be her  _savior_ , her  _fairy godfather_ , magically handing her a pre-built life in comparative paradise."

"How long?" the Doctor asks in quiet horror. "How long were you held prisoner before I figured it out and rescued you?"

Clara laughs bitterly. "Oh, I'm sorry… did I somehow imply that  _you_  were the one who rescued me? Or even the one who realized I was still alive?"

There's no trace of suspicion left on the Doctor's face now; it's been replaced with a look of pure, kicked-puppy misery.

"After  _Jack_  figured it out," Clara continues, "After  _Jack_  rescued me, he brought me home. And that's when I discovered that you had  _given my life away_  to a stranger."

"Oh, Clara…"

"So,  _yes_. Yes, she  _does_  have my National Insurance number. And yes, she  _did_  get to go to Artie's graduation and Angie's wedding. Yes, she spends Christmas with my family and my birthday with my friends. And yes, it  _is_  incredibly painful, thanks a bloody lot for  _not_  asking!"

"Did you ever try…"

"To get my  _entire life_  back? Of course I did," Clara sighs. "But the vortex manipulator was damaged, and we showed up two years late. By then, the other Clara had married my boyfriend. They'd had one child already and she was pregnant with another. What was I supposed to do?"

"You said that version of me liked to fix mistakes," the Doctor pleads. "Clara, please…  _please_  tell me he did something to fix this for you."

"He apologized, sort of," Clara shrugs. "I only saw him the once after I got home. Kate Stewart was the one who helped me with a new identity."

She's done something amazing… rendered the Doctor both silent and motionless.

"How do you not hate me?" he finally says.

"Kinda  _do_ , a bit," she smiles.

The bell rings, and Clara extricates herself from the picnic table, hefting her satchel on her shoulder. "That'll be me, off to shape young minds. You still picking me up at three-thirty?"

He nods mutely, then catches her wrist as she passes. "Clara…"

" _No_." She shakes his grip off, brandishing a finger at him. "Don't you point those big sad eyes at me. Go away, don't come back again until school is over, and think up a decent apology to me for how you just handled  _that_."

Clara stomps back into the school building, the door slamming behind her.

Harold exits just behind her, shooting the Doctor a nasty look as he passes. The Doctor replies by sticking his tongue out.

Then he takes off at a run for the motorbike.

* * *

Thirty minutes later, he's back in Sarah Jane's attic… or rather, the thing that  _looks_  like Sarah Jane's attic, but is actually the Mark 40 TARDIS of humany-wumany, fourth-faced Future Him.

"Thalaxis, Thalaxis,  _Thalaxis_ ," he mutters, typing furiously into the console. " _Why_  does that ring a bell…"

He pulls the screen closer to him, grimacing with annoyance when he has to advance the display with an old brass cogwheel.  _Why would anyone choose this annoying desktop?_

"Come on, Sexy,  _help me_ ," he breathes.

The console screen darkens, then flares to life with a fast food commercial.

Suddenly, he is desperately, mind-numbingly hungry.

And he remembers:  _Thalaxis._ The birthplace of telepathic television.

No longer content to merely influence viewer's emotions by projecting onto a screen, Thalaxian television was wirelessly transmitted directly into the brain's sensory processors. The audience didn't  _watch_  the programs… they felt like they were actually living them in the first person.

But as he'd seen throughout history — and he shudders in revulsion, remembering the Gamestation — the Thalaxians had eventually taken the cheaper, easier road of reality television. Rather than pay for actors, writers, and sets, they'd harvested stories...  _memories_ … directly out of people's brains for broadcast to the masses.

Some people had signed up to be harvested, happily exchanging the privacy of their own mind for a shot at celebrity.

"But volunteers wouldn't have the  _juicy_  stuff," the Doctor whispers to himself, typing in a search and hitting ENTER with a flourish. "The kind that brings in the  _real_  ratings…"

The console screen flickers, then confirms his suspicions: in the final centuries of the Thalaxian media empire, they had secretly harvested most of their award-winning programs from criminals that had been stripped of their privacy rights by the government.

He cranks the irritating cogwheel, and the onscreen paragraph dissolves into another.

 _Thalaxis' all-time top-rated programme, entitled_ The Lives of Clara _, ran for a record-breaking 143 seasons. Each season followed the titular character, Clara Oswald, (occasionally under aliases such as 'Oswin Oswald' or 'Clara Montague') as she reincarnated into a new existence, always haunted by the mysterious figure known only as 'The Doctor'._

 _Despite accusations that the show was sexist and repetitive (nearly every season concluded with Clara sacrificing her own life to save "The Doctor"),_ The Lives of Clara  _remained the network's most lucrative property until it was suddenly and mysteriously canceled._

The Doctor drops bonelessly into the jump seat, pressing his trembling fist to his lips.

_A hundred and forty-three seasons._

_A hundred and forty-three years_  of Clara frozen in a Thalaxian stasis pod, where the most private contents of her mind were strip-mined and beamed across the universe for the titillation and amusement of others.

No wonder the Thalaxians had convinced his future self that Clara was dead. How could they resist keeping her? She was a uniquely exploitable omnibus, a well that could never run dry... one perfect fall leaf teeming with infinite story.

The God of Akhaten had choked, but the appetite of the faceless, anonymous Audience had never been appeased.

A hundred and forty-three seasons of galactic mega-broadcast...  _and he hadn't noticed_.

Hadn't had her back. Hadn't come to save her.

But  _Jack_  had... and he'd risked one last round trip with an aging, unreliable vortex manipulator to do it. It should have been a suicide mission... and hell, knowing Jack, it probably  _had_  been a dozen times.

 _I was all right,_ Clara had said on his first day here.  _I had Jack._

It hadn't meant what the Doctor had assumed it meant.

It had meant something  _so much worse_.

Against all odds, Jack had rescued Clara… and when Clara returned to Earth, she'd discovered that —  _because of the Doctor's own meddling_  — she no longer had a life to return to.

It all makes horrible sense now. The antidepressants, the sleeping pills. The lonely, dusty little flat built for one, the calendar with nothing on it, the lack of any new pictures of her friends or family.

He is seized with mad impulse:  _he could steal this TARDIS_. It wouldn't even  _really_  be stealing, and human-him was using it for  _art storage_  anyway.

Steal this TARDIS, go racing across time and space, and…  _what_?

Rescue Clara a hundred and forty-three years earlier?

Bomb Thalaxis into smithereens?

Find "Branston Pickle" and  _punch him in his sodding face_?

That appealing thought is interrupted by a soft rapping at the door.

"Doctor?" Sarah Jane says from outside in the hallway. "It's nearly two, and traffic's usually quite bad in the afternoons."

He calls out a thank-you, still pacing frantically.

"If I can make a suggestion… you might want to stop by a florist? Possibly a chocolate shop? I don't know Clara all that well, but some little token might help…"

He thanks her again, but the effort of being polite is making his head throb.

Flowers and sweets.  _Right_. Did they also sell greeting cards with "SORRY MY FUTURE INCARNATION LEFT YOU FOR DEAD AND UTTERLY RUINED YOUR LIFE" in glittery script above a drawing of some cute cartoon animal?

He could go back in time and nick some of her things. Her mother's ring, that travel book. Then she'd have  _those_ , at least...

His hands are already on the levers before he realizes:  _No, he can't._ He can't go there, or anywhere. The minute this TARDIS enters the Time Vortex, the Blinovitch Limitation Effect will kick in, and he'll forget everything.

 _And that means that I'll_ never  _be able to make this any better for Clara. The minute I try, I'll forget there's anything to fix. I'll go scampering off on my next adventure and abandon her here..._

A howl of frustration tears from his throat, and he bangs his fists against the console. He hasn't despised the laws of time this much since he was left standing in a cemetery outside Manhattan.

And he doesn't have  _time_  to wallow in his guilt. He hadn't even managed to tell Clara what he'd originally driven to Coal Hill to ask her about.

When Donna had called that morning to schedule her appointment, he'd asked her when she first started having her "migraines".

"Think it started right after the earthquake," Donna had said.

"Which earthquake?" he'd asked.

"Dunno... I must have slept right through it. Me, I sleep through  _everything_  interesting. Get teased about it all the time."

He'd closed his eyes in pain at that, only for them to pop wide at her next words:

"Left one  _hell_  of a crack in my wall, though."


	8. Chapter 8

The last bell rings, the students thunder out, and Clara's left standing in the first silence since the Doctor's incredibly upsetting lunchtime visit.

But silence means  _thinking_ , and thinking is the absolute last thing she wants to do right now. She snatches up the stack of essays on her desk and pops a red pen between her teeth; marking these up will be a mind-numbing exercise in boredom.

 _Perfect_.

She opens the door to the nature area, then lets out a resounding sigh.

The Doctor's already there, sitting at the same picnic table and drumming impatiently on the top.

"Clara!" he cries. "Come out! I've prepared my apology."

She crosses her arms. "Mmm.  _This_  should be good."

"I detect an unappreciated note of sarcasm," he pouts.

"Sorry," she chuckles. "I've just been wondering all afternoon how you'd handle an actual apology. I mean, usually you just whisk people off to see a nebula so dazzling that they can't remember why they're cross at you."

"I do  _not_  do that."

She gives him her most dubious eyebrow.

"Well, most of the time," he amends. "Some of the time. At least nine percent of the time...  _ish_."

"All right," she declares, slipping onto the opposite seat. "Let's hear it."

"Well, first, since I ruined your lunch, I brought you a replacement." He retrieves a takeaway box from the bench next to him and sets it on the table between them.

She peeks under the lid. "Ooh, Thai.  _Well_  played. Go on."

"Also,  _this_." With an eager grin, he pulls out  _101 Places to See_.

"How in the  _hell_  did you…  _oh_." Clara's face falls, and she struggles to keep the disappointment out of her voice. "The TARDIS came back, didn't she."

"No, no. Well, sort of, but not really. Did you ever notice that Sarah Jane's husband looked familiar?"

"I did, actually... never could place how."

"Well, shocking twist... he's  _me_. Distant-y future me, all humanated and aging. He's recycled the fourth face  _and_  fixed the chameleon circuit. Sarah Jane's attic isn't an attic... it's a TARDIS!"

"You're telling me that  _Sarah Jane_ married  _Scarfy-Poo_ ," Clara blinks in disbelief.

His face contorts in dismay. "Oh, no, you lot  _didn't_."

"So you, what? Went back in time and got the book?"

"Not an option. The minute I actually  _go_  somewhere…  _poof_." He mimes an explosion in his head with his hand. "Memory erased."

"So how…?"

"Future-Me's got this tragically irritating desktop installed. Just ghastly. And that's when extremely clever Present-Me recalled that the TARDIS archives all the old control rooms. She brought up mine for me, and guess what I found lying on the console." He wiggles the book in both hands. "I suspect the old girl likes you better than you thought."

Clara bites her lip, and he sets the book down, pushing it towards her. "Go on, Clara. Open it."

She finally does… and claps her hand over her mouth at the sight of the leaf inside.

"The TARDIS must have done a backup before we went to Akhaten," the Doctor says. "And I thought… why,  _there's_  a thing that belongs with the  _real_  Clara Oswald."

Clara's head snaps up, her eyes wide and bright with moisture.

" _This_ , at least, belongs only to  _you_ , Clara... forever," he adds softly.

She chokes down a sob that turns into a half-laugh. "All right, you've officially topped the Thai food. Thank you, Doctor."

"Hang on, hang on, one more. Well, actually, two more." He pulls out a large, glossy photograph of a dazzling nebula. "I brought this just in case the rest didn't work."

Now she really does laugh, lightly slapping his arm.

He lights up at his joke's success, then reaches in his pocket and pulls out a slim gold bracelet.

"Jewelry, hmm? You  _have_  gone all out."

"Well, jewelry, yes, technically, but more importantly… personal perception filter." He clasps the bracelet around her wrist.

"That's… interesting?" She bends her arm for a closer look at the metal.

"Press that little green gem on the side there, and it will change how you look to others. Not much… just enough that you won't be recognized."

"Well... it's lovely, thank you," she says, obviously still confused.

"So if you wanted to attend a particular graduation… or gate-crash a certain wedding… or perhaps re-make some old friends..."

Clara's eyes widen as she realizes the implications of what he's saying.

"I know it's incredibly small compared to what you've lost, Clara..."

She's trying so hard not to cry. "It's incredibly  _thoughtful_. All of it. Apology both accepted and applauded."

"Wait, no, don't forgive me yet, I forgot the last thing."

She chuckles. "You've done the dazzling nebula already."

"It's  _this_." He extends his open, cupped palm to her.

"Okay, that's… um." Her gaze flicks between his empty hand and his eyes. "Is it... something invisible?"

He smiles. " _This_ , Clara… is  _absolutely nothing_."

"Possibly should have stopped at the magic jewelry," she quips.

"This particular  _absolutely nothing..._  is what remains of the entire Thalaxian broadcast archive. I've obliterated it."

Clara freezes. "What? You… you  _what_?"

"A telepathic virus for a telepathic broadcast." He spreads his hands, obviously pleased with himself. "Couldn't erase it from history completely, since it's how Jack found you… but everyone who saw it has forgotten it ever existed. Useful little party trick I reverse-engineered from the Silence a few centuries back, and you'll like this part... I got the original idea from one Oswin the Dalek. So in a way, Clara...  _you_  obliterated it."

Clara stares at him in absolute shock.

His triumph-hands start to sag. "Er... have I mucked it up? I really thought you'd be pleased..."

She presses her fingertips to her eyelids, trying to keep her composure. "I'm pleased, Doctor. I promise."

"Well, you don't  _look_  pleased."

"No, I am. I'm  _incredibly_ … well. If I told you, you'd think I was a terrible person."

He smiles faintly. "I'd say you've earned a little terrible, Clara Oswald."

"When I was first…  _taken_." She swipes her eyes again. "I threatened every guard, everyone who tried to touch me. I told them they were putting themselves in horrible danger… that  _The Oncoming Storm, Bringer of Darkness_  was coming for me, and God help them if they were between us when you did. I'd lie in my cell at night, imagining how you'd make them pay for what they were doing."

The Doctor listens, anxiously running a finger across his lips.

"River had told me about Demon's Run, you know. What you did when someone dared to take Amy Pond from you. And I... waited."

She sighs, hugging herself against a nonexistent chill.

"Eventually, the guards made fun of me over it. Say a rat ran across the floor... they'd pretend to be scared, you know? ' _Watch out, it's the Oncoming Storm, Bringer of Darkness! He's finally come for Clara!'_ "

"Clara," the Doctor growls, "If you're trying to make me genocidal,  _it's working_."

She bites her lip. "Okay, see… proving my point, right there. Only a terrible person would get  _turned on_  by you saying that."

He smiles a fraction at that, folding her hand in his and bringing it to his lips.

"Anyway," Clara shrugs, "It feels…  _really_  satisfying. To know that you took something from them, for me. It feels even  _better_  that you used Oswin to do it, like... like I got a little of my own power back, yeah? And I'm actually glad you did something like  _that_  rather than a violent thing, because I don't have to feel guilty about it."

They share a tentative smile, and he checks his watch. "Apologies for the abrupt and awkward subject change, but I really do need to ask you something before we see Donna."

She nods, pulling her takeaway towards her and popping a piece of broccoli in her mouth.

"If I tell you that Donna's problems started at the same time she developed a crack in her wall, does that mean anything to you?"

Clara swallows. "Oh,  _no_. Not again..."

"I was afraid you might say something like that," he sighs.

Clara pushes her food aside, laying her hand on the table, palm-up.

He eyes it dubiously. "Really? It's  _that_  long of a story?"

She sighs. "It's...  _Trenzalore_."

His stunned eyes fly to hers, sympathetic brown meeting horrified green.

"Brave heart, Doctor," Clara whispers. "It'll be quick."

He takes her hand.

* * *

She's right. It's quick.

From Clara's perspective, the entire nine-hundred-year Siege of Trenzalore takes place during one horrible, heartbreaking Christmas dinner.

He slams his own shields down at the end,  _his_  end, for one simple reason.

_His hand glowing gold, stretching out into the dark, yearning for Clara but unable to touch…_

He wants to come back to the present, where his hand is still in hers.

Neither of them can speak for a while.

"I heard something terribly sad, once," he finally says, running his thumb across the pad of her own. "Never forgot it."

When he doesn't continue, she squeezes his hand. "What was it?"

" _One day, your parents set you down and never picked you back up again._ "

"That's  _horrible_ ," she breathes.

"And I've just realized... one day, very soon,  _too_  soon, I let go of this hand and never hold it again." He locks his eyes with hers, presses a kiss to her palm.

He can almost hear the gears in her head turning as she searches for a flippant quip to lighten the mood... but in the end, she merely takes his other hand and mirrors the gesture.

There is another long silence, broken only by the fluttering of the breeze through the leaves.

"Doctor… are you all right?"

He smiles up at her sadly. "It's... a lot to process."

"So… you know about the crack, now. The Time Lords, all of that."

He nods. "Clara Oswald saves my life, yet again."

"Didn't mean  _that_. You saw it — on Trenzalore, it moved, then closed. So… where'd it go?"

"You think it may have reopened on Donna's wall?"

"I dunno, what if… what if it's somehow…  _scanning_  for Time Lords?"

He mulls this over. "Could be… except it opened on Trenzalore long before I arrived."

"True, but they're  _Time Lords_ … the ultimate in  _timey-wimey_ , right? You lived in that clock tower for the next  _nine hundred years_. Nearly half your life so far. If you've got anything like a permanent mailing address…"

He nods. "Good point. But speaking of time… we need to go."

They stand up from the picnic table, and Clara begins gathering things up in her satchel.

"Clara," the Doctor says.

"Hmm?"

And he pounces, kissing her... gently at first, then with rising greed. His hands move relentlessly to cup her jaw, stroke her hair, press her more firmly against him.

When they break apart, breathless, she chuckles.

"Not that I'm complaining, but what was that for?"

"Because I still could," he says, letting a lock of her hair spill through his fingers. "Because nine hundred years is a long time to stare out at the snow and miss you."

She can hardly move, hypnotized as he gently pushes her hair back from her face.

"Clara… I'd like to repair your shields tonight, if you'll let me."

And there's something about the low, throaty way he says it, the fire in his gaze and the hunger with which it roams her face, that sends a lance of heat through Clara.

This isn't merely a friendly offer, and it's only the prelude to what he ultimately wants.


	9. Chapter 9

"All right, we're a little pressed for time, so follow me," Martha says, handing them each a folded stack of clothing and a laminated clip-on ID badge before setting off briskly down the hallway.

She pauses every few feet to flip the office lights back on. "Clara, you'll play the receptionist for this. There won't be much to it… just greet Donna when she arrives and have her fill out the clipboard of paperwork I've put on the desk."

"What do we need  _paperwork_  for?" the Doctor grimaces. "Horrid stuff, boring. I'm intensely opposed on principle."

Martha looks incredulous. "Do you have any idea how suspicious it would look if we  _didn't_  make her fill out paperwork?"

The Doctor holds up his ID card. "Love a nametag, though. Where'd you get the photos of us?"

"UNIT. They did the badges in-house; they're perfect right down to the holograms."

"UNIT? I thought you were private practice now?"

"Still affiliated." Martha presses a wall panel, and soft instrumental music begins to play. "When NHS flags a case for UNIT's attention, the patient is referred to us. We determine if it's actually something UNIT needs to look into. They might have picked up on Donna earlier, but she's private insurance."

She snaps on the lights in a large room full of equipment. "You probably won't need any of this, seeing as you've got the sonic, but just in case…"

"Martha!" The Doctor crosses to run his hands lovingly over what appears to be a standard MRI. "Is this what I think it is?"

"The machine that goes  _ding_ , yeah," she grins. "We've stopped it boiling eggs, though."

"Oh, look at you, funny old thing, dressed up all  _fancy_ ," the Doctor purrs, patting the top of the device.

" _Has… not… changed… one… bit_ ," Martha mutters to herself before addressing them again. "So when Donna arrives, Clara greets her, gives her the paperwork. I'm posing as your nurse, so five minutes later, I'll come get her, take her vitals. Then I'll come get you, Doctor, and you go in to see her. Do  _not_  go in there until I come and get you, do you understand? This needs to look  _normal_."

"Normal, right. That's fine. I'm the King of Normal."

"If you'd named  _any_  other planet, I'd have believed you," Martha holds out her palm. "Give it here, mister."

"What?"

"The bow tie."

He claps a protective hand over it. "She's already seen it! Remarked on it, even. And it'll look cool with the lab coat."

Martha shakes her head. "Into my office, you. Remember what I said about not coming out."

* * *

The Doctor likes Martha's office. It's warm yet efficient, and pleasantly reminiscent of its owner. Teeming bookshelves line one wall, and a framed photograph catches his eye.

It's a large group photo, obviously taken at Sarah Jane's wedding. She stands at the center in her simple vintage dress, laughing up at her mad-eyed groom.

So many familiar, beloved faces. Jo, Liz, and Harry... Ace, Sam, and Izzy... Jack, Martha, and Mickey… Craig, Sophie and not-so-little-anymore Stormageddon. And Clara, of course.

"Look at you, you old goat, getting to grow up with all of  _them_." The Doctor taps his finger on his future incarnation's face. "I'll have you know I'm jealous."

He trails his fingertips across the glass, trying not to think too much about all the old friends that  _should_  have been in the photograph but weren't...

_Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock._

"All right, Martha, I'm coming, hang on a mo'..." The Doctor replaces the picture and yanks the office door open.

"It's  _you_ , isn't it?" Wilfred Mott says. "Please say it's you."

The Doctor beams. He can't help it. "It's me, Wilf."

For a man in his nineties, Wilf can still deliver one bonecrushing hug. When it's done, he pats the Doctor's shoulders with his gnarled hands, as if reassuring himself.

"You told me you'd change, but oh, look at you... you're just a baby."

The Doctor notices Wilf's trembling grip on his cane. "Come, come, sit."

Wilf lowers himself slowly into the chair opposite the desk. "When Donna told me she'd run into her old Doctor, I prayed. I prayed it'd be you. Can you help her?"

"I'm not sure what precisely is  _wrong_ , yet. Hence this whole ruse. What can you tell me?"

"It started about two months ago. She's remembering, like before. Same pain in her head."

"She said there was a crack in your wall. Can you describe it?"

"It's gone, now. I told Donna I plastered over it, but that wasn't true. It just disappeared, about a week after it arrived. I didn't  _like_  that crack, Doctor. It wasn't  _right_."

"How so?"

"It didn't  _feel_  right. Every time I got near it, I felt…" Wilf draws a shaky finger across his lips, thinking hard. "It felt like the  _war_. That feeling, when you're waiting, and you know that at any moment… all hell is coming for you.  _That's_  how it felt."

"You're a remarkable man, Wilfred Mott," the Doctor says quietly.

"So tell me, then, Doctor. What  _was_  that crack?"

"It's a tear in the fabric of reality… and you've already figured out what's on the other side."

Wilf leans over the top of his cane. "And what does it want with my Donna?"

"At my best guess — well, Clara's best guess, but I'm stealing it — it  _doesn't_  want Donna. I think it's looking for  _me_. But if you were searching this planet for a Time Lord…"

"Donna's the next closest thing," Wilf guesses.

"She would have confused them. They've never encountered that kind of metacrisis before. You said the crack was there a week… they could have been scanning, testing..."

"And that undid…" Wilf points at his forehead. "What  _you_  did?"

"I won't know until I see her." He looks up as Martha raps softly on the door. "Which appears to be happening now."

The Doctor pulls out one of Martha's business cards, flipping it over and writing Clara's number and address down. "Call me, Wilf. If anything new happens… or you want to get a coffee. I'm closer by than you'd expect."

Wilf takes the card, peering at the address. "But this is just a few streets away from us! You're living in London now?"

"I'm a bit TARDIS-free at the moment," the Doctor replies, coming around the desk and helping Wilf to stand. "But as places to get stranded go, believe me, I'll end up in worse."

* * *

"What's  _that_  thing, then?" Donna demands.

"Portable neural scanner," the Doctor replies, maneuvering the sonic around her head. "Very cutting-edge."

"Looks like one of those grippy sticks my gramps uses to get down high jars."

"Those are…" the Doctor starts to explode with indignation and technical specs, then remembers himself, adding sourly: "Yes, they're a bit like... grippy sticks."

"What's it telling you? Better not have one of those brain tumors, I saw a show about them just the other night. This girl's a maid, yeah, but she's secretly the heiress of..."

She keeps chattering, but the Doctor's attention is on her Artron energy readings. After a decade away from time travel, they should have dropped somewhat; instead, they're dangerously elevated.

In fact, Donna's readings are nearly as high as Clara's right after he pulled her out of his timestream, which shouldn't be possible at all.

"All right, Donna... I'm just going to check your muscles, make sure you don't have any issues there that could be causing your headaches."

He gently presses on her neck, moves her head from side to side. It's all a cover, of course, and when his fingers are in position, he slips inside her mind.

When he does, he nearly screams in fury.

It takes everything he has within him to tamp down his rage and focus on the task at hand. He can't fix this, only temporarily triage, but if he can keep her from totally overloading...

He scans her mind, looking for raw materials to patch with, and can't resist a slight quirk of his lips when he finds just what he needs.

_Oh, Donna Noble, bless your television addiction._

He shifts his hands slightly and starts to  _press_...

_Two friends time-travelling in a blue police box? Silly, lovely Donna, that was an American phone booth, and those friends were named Bill and Ted. Look at that, they're even wearing the same sandshoes..._

_And that Ted one... why, you've seen plenty of his films, haven't you? Look at the suit, tie and trenchcoat he's wearing in this one, and this one, and this one too..._

_Oh, Donna, you're not remembering anything but old films you half-watched on those long nights when you couldn't sleep. Of course they're all blurring together..._

When he's done, he continues to move his hands, rubbing circles against the back of her neck with his fingertips.

"Oi, that feels loads better! What'd you do?"

"You have a knot back here," he lies, applying extra pressure with his thumb. "This muscle's extremely tense. That could definitely be a contributing factor, hmm."

He lets go, stepping back and perching on the stool. "I'd like you to start getting regular massages, Donna. Once a week, or more often if you can manage it."

"Not arguing with  _that_  prescription!" she guffaws. "Say, can you actually  _write_  one, so I can show it to my mum? The hell she'll give me otherwise about being spoilt..."

He bites back everything he'd love to say about Donna's mother and pulls out one of Martha's prescription pads.

* * *

"Do you think he forgot he can come out now?" Martha asks, shooting a quizzical look through the doorway. "Mick knows I'll be in late tonight, but I didn't think I'd be quite  _this_  late."

She and Clara are sitting at the reception desk, sharing Clara's lukewarm takeaway. It's been nearly forty minutes since Martha locked the doors behind Donna and Wilf, and the Doctor still hasn't come out of her office.

"I saw him walk through right after he'd seen Donna," Clara says, shaking her head. "He had his jaw all popped out to one side. That's a bad, bad sign. He's furious."

"Well, I wish he'd at least tell us what's going on." Martha spears a bit of beef and swirls it through sauce. "I know I wasn't as close to her as he was... but Donna was my friend, too."

"I'm sorry," Clara says. "It must have been hard, seeing her today."

"I've loved getting to know you and the others, I really have. But every time we all went out, every single time, I'd always have this… little moment, where it all got bittersweet. I'd look around, and there we all were, having so much fun, and I'd think…  _Donna should be here_."

"Quite right," the Doctor says from the doorway.

Martha spins in her chair with a sharp, " _Well?_ "

"Have you ever microwaved a raw egg?" the Doctor asks, his voice rough with restrained anger. "There's a moment, just before it explodes, when the shell cracks from the pressure and the contents start leaking..."

"You're saying someone  _microwaved_  Donna's brain?" Clara asks.

"Metaphor," he says, waving as if to shoo it away. "She's been exposed to vortex energy."

"So it  _was_  the Time Lords," Martha says. "Is she going to turn into that… Bad Wolf thing?"

"Donna only received a tiny fraction of what Rose absorbed," the Doctor says, shaking his head. "In a normal adult human, it would have been harmless. But vortex energy is what evolved Time Lords in the first place; it affects us much like your various hormones affect you. Exposure to it in the womb is what mutated River... and it's sent the Time Lord part of Donna's brain into, well...  _puberty_. It's  _growing_ , and I can't stop the growth."

"What's going to happen to her?" Clara asks.

"If she were an actual Time Lord, this would be a normal part of her development, and her body would be prepared for it. As a human…" he wrings his hands unhappily, "She might as well have an aggressive brain tumor."

Pained silence falls between the three of them.

"You'll figure something out," Clara finally says. "You always figure something out."

"Oh, like how I rescued you from Thalaxis?" he snaps. "Like how I saved Victorian Clara, or Dalek Oswin? You  _must_  mean my stunning liberation of the Ponds from 1938, or how I prevented their only daughter from being kidnapped."

He scowls. "I  _don't_  always figure something out, Clara. Sometimes, I am  _just not clever enough_ , and the people I love  _suffer_  and  _die_."

He storms towards the entrance, yanking the ID badge off in disgust.

"Well,  _be more bloody clever,_ then!" Clara yells, leaping out of her chair. "Because you  _do_  save Donna, or I wouldn't have this  _stupid_  tattoo! He'd  _remember_  if you weren't able to do it. So there  _is_  a way, and you  _will_  find it in time!"

The Doctor's face slowly transforms, defeat brightening into a thoughtful hope.

"All right, you two," Martha says, standing up as well. "I've  _got_  to close the office. Let's just all go home and sleep on it. I'll talk to UNIT in the morning and see if they have anything to offer. I'll be in touch, yeah?"

They all walk out into the gathering dark, Martha giving them a last wave before heading across the parking lot to her waiting car.

The Doctor draws Clara to him, presses a kiss on her forehead. "Thank you, Clara, for setting my head on straight. Again."

"This has been one hell of a rollercoaster day, hasn't it?" she sighs.

"I wish..." he says, then cuts himself off. "No, no, forget I even started saying that."

"Ugh, I'm too worn out to nag you until you tell me," Clara chuckles. "Let's just go home."

They ride back to Chiswick in silence, Clara's arms wrapped around him and her head nestled between his shoulder blades.

_Oh, Clara, I wished the wish of a selfish and terrified old man. I wished I could take you to Trenzalore... but I can't do that to you. You deserve better than to waste away under a sky filled with more Daleks than stars. You deserve a real life, a real family. I took that away from you once, and I refuse to do it again._

_But I wish we really were going home, to our home, to a warm place where I could steal just a little more time with you. I searched for you for so long, and when I finally found you, it was even better than I'd hoped. I thought we'd have years to run, not months..._

_How will I ever find the strength to get back on the TARDIS, knowing what's next? Nine hundred years in the darkness, Clara, nine hundred years alone and at war. From where I'm standing, it looks like hell. An interminable hell that only ends with my death._

_I don't want to go, not yet, please… not just yet. I want to bicker with Donna and star-gaze with Wilf. I want to harass Jack and bewilder Craig, I want to be around when Martha and Mickey discover the pregnancy I can already hear. I want to be in that photo from Sarah Jane's wedding, with my arms around every one of you. I want to drink deep of life, of friendship, of laughter, of everything the next half of my life won't have._

_And oh, Clara, I want you. I always have, but dread of coming famine makes me recklessly gluttonous. I don't merely want to touch you in all the ways I've never dared, I want everything._

_I want every single day you have to give. I want to scratch my true name into your soul. I want you to belong to me._

_And maybe even more than that, Clara Oswald... I want to belong to you. I want to walk out your door and see nothing in those eyes but absolute certainty that I'm coming right back. I want you to feel happy and safe and loved. I want to be the one who gives you that beautiful life that you deserve._

_But it doesn't matter what I want. When has it ever? That's not my future, the solitary darkness is. All I can do is savor this little time I've been given and try to draw enough strength from it to get me through the long night to come._

_After all this time, I finally understand: you truly are my impossible girl. Impossible to have, impossible to keep, impossible to leave without breaking my hearts._

_I know what will make me brave enough to step back on the TARDIS, brave enough to throw that lever. I'll know that you're waiting for me at the end, with your Christmas cracker and your funny bow-tie sweater. Your sweet face will be the last thing I ever see, and I'm glad of that, at least._

_And I promise you one thing, Clara: when your cranky old Scottish Doctor finally remembers this, he won't be disgusted._

_He'll be broken._

_Absolutely broken._


	10. Chapter 10

Clara's mobile alarm goes off at five, and she barely has time to mumble a plea for it to shut up when she's violently bounced a few inches into the air. Yelping in surprise, she grabs for something to steady her and shrieks in second shock when she seizes a warm, bony wrist.

"WHAT... THE...  _BLAZES_... IS... THAT?" the Doctor bellows, clapping his hands over his ears.

He's sat straight up next to her, completely clothed, but with a case of bedhead so sculpturally spectacular that Clara collapses back on the mattress in a giggling fit.

"Sorry, sorry... it's the alarm on my mobile... I just need to find it..." she gasps through laughter, her hand scrabbling at the spot on the nightstand where she usually charges it.

"AND  _WHY_  IT IS LOUDER THAN THE MATING STAMPEDE OF THE NOORIAN RUSTLAFLUMPS?" he yells.

"My insomnia pills…  _oof!_... make it hard to wake up sometimes…" Clara's dangling half-off the bed now, her fingertips hunting across the floor. "Where on earth…"

The Doctor's still staring at her in bewilderment, his hands glued to the sides of his head.

"It's coming from over there… wait, are you  _sitting_  on it?" She dives one hand under his buttocks, and he lets out a soprano shriek.

Her brain is slowly coming back online. "No, wait! You borrowed it yesterday! It's probably in one of your pockets!"

"WHAT?" he yells.

"Take your hands off your ears! It's probably in your trousers!"

"WHAT?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake," she huffs, swinging a leg over to straddle him and plunging her hands inside his jacket.

If she'd thought his eyes were huge before, they're bulging now. Clara lets out a "hah!" as she locates her mobile in his inner pocket, sliding it out and finally, blissfully, silencing the damned thing.

She lets out a long sigh of relief… then realizes where she is.

"Hello," he smirks, removing his hands from his ears and resting them on her thighs.

" _Oh_ … hello," she replies, a little breathlessly.

"That noise should be outlawed."

"Sorry... I know your hearing's sensitive..." She moves to roll off him, but his hands are holding her in place.

"I, uh…" she points down. "Should move. Sonic's jabbing me."

He gives her a comically mock-solemn look, very slowly shaking his head.

" _Oh_." She adjusts her hips a little, grinning when the movement makes his breath hitch. "Ahh, much comfier."

"Not the  _precise_  adjective I'd choose..." he mutters.

"Your hair is  _amazing_ ," Clara marvels, reaching out to flop a section of it to the other side. "It totally defies the laws of gravity, doesn't it?"

"Yes, well, that does seems to be becoming a bit of a  _theme_." He shifts beneath her, and Clara flushes at the hardened heat of him.

"Right. I should probably ask... what are we both doing in my bedroom?" Her tone is brisk, but she can't resist grinding against him just a little bit more.

"I...  _ahhhh_... worked on your shields last night, do you not remember?" He touches her cheek in concern. "There shouldn't be amnesia afterwards... what's the last thing you recall?"

"I do remember now, a bit." She can't stop tinkering with his hilarious hair. "I was knackered, you said that was fine, I'd probably doze off during it anyway. Am I sorted, then?"

A flicker of anger crosses his face. "You've had some cowboys in, but I've stopped the leak. We should talk about it when there's more time."

"So… I suppose you know absolutely everything about me, now. Feel free to run away screaming."

"For one thing,  _no_ , I don't, I was uncharacteristically and painstakingly protective of your privacy. For another…" he rolls his own hips against her, a mischievous grin quirking his lips. "Do I really seem that horrified?"

She flushes. "Well, that just happens to men in the morning."

"I fell asleep inside you, Clara," he murmurs, locking his eyes on hers. " _That's_  why."

This time, it's her that stammers awkwardly. "Inside my m-mind, you mean."

" _Yes_." His thumb brushes her cheekbone. "For a telepathic race, that can be... well, picture a Victorian at a shapely ankle convention. I had some trouble concentrating on the task at hand."

She bites her lip. "And you fell  _asleep_  in there? How'd that happen?"

"You have a beautiful mind, Clara. It's warm, and kind, and brave. To be perfectly honest, I kept finding excuses not to leave, and simply waited too long. And then, well… we were dreaming."

"What, together?"

"Yes." He trails his fingers down her jawline.

"What'd we dream about?"

"Hazard a guess," he chuckles, shifting against her.

"And I forgot it? Ooh,  _not_  fair."

"I have an incredibly important question for you now, Clara." He lets his middle finger trace the neckline of her blouse, then grins up at her. "How long before you have to get ready for work?"

She reaches up, feeling her hair, touching her face. Yesterday's updo is half-collapsed, and her fingers come away gritty and stained with mascara. "Depends. How bad do I look?"

"Loveliest thing in at least fourteen galaxies."

She can't help grinning. "Okay, scratch that. How bad would my  _boss_  think I looked?"

"He  _might_  appreciate the smeary bits slightly less," the Doctor admits.

"Then, unfortunately, the answer to your question is  _now_."

He runs his thumb across her lips. "I was afraid of that."

She opens her mouth to make a joke —  _well, clearly we need a time machine! —_ then remembers he'll be leaving as soon as he has one again. Her face falls.

His does too, like he read her mind, which reminds her...

"Can you still get back in?" She points at her head. "I mean, if you needed to?"

He nods, then gives her a coy glance. "Would you like our dream back?"

"Um... yes. Yes, I think so, yes."

He cups her face briefly, then withdraws his hands.

"But... I don't remember anything?"

"Oh, you will," he promises, mouth curving wickedly as he holds up his wristwatch and taps it. "At 12:45 p.m. Do make sure you're alone."

"You're  _bad_!" she cries, punching his shoulder lightly.

"Perhaps. I suppose you'll find out just how much at lunchtime."

He looks so damned smug that she plants her hand on his chest, pushing him back into the pillows.

He just laughs and yanks her down with him, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

"You're going to be terribly tardy, Clara Oswald," he teases.

"Not as tardy as I'd  _like_  to be," she growls back, but rolls off him anyway.

* * *

She steps out of the shower and towels off the mirror, drawing a deep, appreciative breath at the smell of coffee brewing downstairs. There's another, lighter smell behind it... cinnamon, maybe?

Oh, she could get used to this.

Oh, she can't get used to this.

That's when she notices the zippered, dark leather bag tucked next to her sink.

Curious, she opens it. Toothbrush, razor, toothpaste — oh, of  _course_  it's the fruit-flavored kind for small children — all opened and used, but obviously newly purchased.

There's a sudden sting in her eyes, and a mad, brief impulse to unpack the little bag... tuck his toothbrush into the holder next to her own, line his shaving cream up next to hers.

"It's a  _travel bag_ ," she sternly tells her reflection, which is looking distressingly starry-eyed. "A travel bag, because he is a  _traveller_. That's what makes him...  _him_. You  _can't_  keep him."

Except that she  _could_ , sort of, and she knows just how; it had sprung into her mind while she was in the shower.

_She could stow away on the TARDIS._

She'd need the other Clara's help to pull it off, probably, but she's almost positive her echo would agree. They're both  _very_  aware that the other Clara owes her one.

Slip onto the TARDIS when it returns. Have her echo pretend to be her and say goodbye to the Doctor. Stow away until Trenzalore. Slip out while her younger self is exploring Christmas. Wait for him to send her younger self away.

Reveal that this time,  _this_  time, finally,  _she'd_  been the one to trick  _him_.

He'd be furious, of course, but what could he do about it, really? The TARDIS wouldn't return for three hundred more years, and she'd be long dead by then.

It would have been a huge sacrifice... for Clara Oswald.

For lonely little Lucy Montague, not so much.

* * *

The coffee's vastly improved after he dumps half a bottle of chocolate syrup in it, and he carries it carefully up the stairs to the guest room. He's on about fifteen missions today, and one of them is figuring out how to open that damned box.

So it's a little anticlimactic when he walks in and realizes that the box is already open, and probably has been for days.

Pouting just a tiny bit, he swings open the lid. It's completely empty except for an envelope.

There's no address; it doesn't need one.

It just says "HELLO, SWEETIE".

He growls in frustration at the sight, throwing up his hands and splashing coffee-flavored chocolate all over himself. "Blasted woman... you could have  _mailed_  it! You didn't have to put it inside a—a telepathic shoebox with a snog-lock!"

He rips the envelope open with his teeth, yanking out the letter inside and wiping unhappily at his soggy waistcoat with his other hand.

The first line is:  _Now what would be the fun in that?_

Apparently the new face came with a not-so-new River Song inside.

Second line:  _And I'll have you know, I'm still incredibly hot._

"I know," he grumbles. He'd figured that much out wading through Clara's broken shields last night. Yowzah.

_This box is much bigger on the inside; you'll find everything you need, once you realize what that is. You said not to give you any hints, but this you is just too much fun to tease._

_So here you go, darling: it doesn't have to be a watch._

_By now you know you're not the last, but have you thought about what that means?_

_Go to the window and look up at the sky, my love. There's so many versions of you up there, more than capable of handling things. The silver fox I'm with at the moment even uses the stabilizers._

"Oh,  _what_  a shock, Great-Uncle Fergus McCrabby  _loves_  the boring-ers," the Doctor sulks.

_Don't call yourself that. You hate it nearly as much as the pickle one._

_I'll see you on the flip side._

_XOXO — River_

_P.S. Don't forget — you and Dad are the same height._

* * *

12:42 finds Clara scurrying down the hallway to the supply closet.

First she'd had three students with questions about their upcoming projects... then she'd been cornered by the school secretary, hell-bent on informing her about oh-so-terribly-important changes to their recycling policy. She'd finally slipped into the staff lavatory and thought she was safe, only to discover two of the history teachers having a loud, gruesomely detailed conversation about hemorrhoids that had sent her fleeing back out again.

She ducks inside the closet, locking the door behind her and sitting down on a stack of copy paper boxes.

12:43. She gnaws her thumbnail.

12:44. She fishes a Dairy Milk out of her purse and pops a square in her mouth.

12:45. The other half of the candy bar falls from her limp hand and hits the floor, unnoticed.

_Teeth and tongue and clever fingers, the Doctor's dark chuckle in her ear as he binds her wrists up with his braces. His voice, raw and choked as he cries her name; her voice, screaming his in a one-word prayer. He's beneath her, behind her, above her, within her body and her mind, sweat-slick and fever-hot. She's begging him, shameless, mindless, babbling faster-harder-more-Doctor-please. The world has relocated to the places they join, and she's breaking into pieces..._

Clara bites the side of her hand to keep from screaming, the other one white-knuckled on the copy box. She's shaking uncontrollably, the intensity of the sensations in her mind  _almost_  enough to take her over the edge in real life.

 _Almost_... and that razor-thin divide leaves her aching as she never has before, a throbbing, searing frustration that feels like it might actually drive her insane. She briefly considers taking care of the problem herself, but that's when the hateful, horrible bell rings.

She wobbles to her feet like a newborn deer, grimacing at the slickness of her inner thighs when she takes her first step. She can only imagine what she looks like; her face feels like it's on fire.

She can't decide whether she's going to murder him, or ask him to do it again tomorrow.

It's going to be a long, long, long afternoon.


	11. Chapter 11

Clara sits on the school's front steps, gnawing on her thumb.

The Doctor's fifteen minutes late, and she's trying not to panic.

_There could have been traffic. Martha could have called with an important update. He could have stopped for petrol…_

But her heart's jackhammering in her chest, the old familiar anxiety rising.

_Left behind without any warning, without a goodbye… at Christmas, in Glasgow, on the front steps of her flat, in a prison cell on Thalaxis…_

She looks up hopefully at the sound of a motorbike arriving... but it's not him, just some lanky hipster boy. She props her chin in her hand and sighs.

"Sorry I'm late!" Hipster Boy yells in an incredibly familiar voice, removing his helmet.

"D-Doctor?" Clara's jaw drops. "You've got… um...  _fashion_ on you."

"Coffee, actually, partial reason for the lateness, and we'll need to get a new washing machine. Accidentally used the vaporize setting... well, accidentally  _gave_  it a vaporize setting, then accidentally used it." He looks down at his outfit. "Oh, you mean the clothes! They're Rory's. I was recently reminded that we're the same size."

"But... I had all of  _your_  clothes in the closet...?"

"Well, you'd gone to such trouble to have those mummified, and..." he drops his voice, suddenly bashful. "I thought perhaps you might like it."

Clara melts a little at his shy admission, biting her lip as she takes him in.

Objectively speaking, he does look nice; if he'd worn  _this_  costume to meet her family all those Christmases ago, she would have done cartwheels of relief.

But it's just not  _right_.

He looks...  _normal._  Modern. Human. Her age. Boyfriend material.

Everything Vastra had accused her of believing.

Everything she desperately needed to remember that he  _wasn't_.

She's taken far too long to say anything, and the Doctor's hopeful expression is faltering. "No good? Not cool?"

Clara skips down the steps to stand in front of him, reaching up to touch the unbuttoned collar of Rory's shirt. "How could it  _possibly_  be cool without a proper bow tie?"

He squints at her suspiciously. "You  _hate_  the bow ties."

"You'd be shocked to discover how much I secretly  _don't_  hate the bow ties."

"And the fez?" he asks hopefully.

"Mmm. Stop while you're ahead."

He chuckles, thumbing her cheek. "I missed you today."

"I missed you too, but..." she punches him lightly on the shoulder. " _That_  is for lunchtime!"

He smirks. "Don't recall  _that_  being on the list at lunchtime, actually. Believe it went a  _bit_  more like…"

His fingers tilt her chin upwards, his mouth descending…

"Ah! Hello, Miss Montague!"

She spins around. It's the Headmaster. Of  _course_  it's the Headmaster.

"Don't believe I've ever met your gentleman friend," he wheezes.

"Ah, yes, I'm… I'm..." the Doctor glances down at Rory's old shirt.

" _Pond!_ " the Doctor blurts… and then his eyes light up with boyish glee. " _James_  Pond."

He attempts to lean suavely against the motorbike, then flails when he nearly tips it over.

Clara bites her lips together, shaking her head in disbelief. "Yes, Mr. Mitchell, this is my dear friend…"

She shoots the Doctor a wicked look. " _Jamie Pond_."

The Doctor's mouth forms a silent 'O' of realization.

"Lovely to meet you, Mr. Pond! You really  _must_ come with Miss Montague to our school fete this week."

"Wouldn't miss it," the Doctor says winningly.

The Headmaster heads to his car, and they whirl on each other.

"James Pond.  _James Pond?_  Really? Are you out of your mind?" she hisses. "Why didn't you just say John Smith? You  _always_  say John Smith!"

"Other me already  _took_  John Smith!"

" _Other you_  is an  _old man_  in  _Ealing_  with a  _completely different face!_  I don't think it would have raised many red flags!"

"Well, it's just for the fete," the Doctor soothes.

She blinks. "You were actually serious about going to the fete?"

"Well, why not? I mean, if I'm..."

He snaps his mouth closed, but the unsaid words hang between them anyway.

_If I'm still here._

They share a long, unhappy look.

"You know what? Sod it," the Doctor declares. "You, me, fete, date. TARDIS or no TARDIS."

"You don't have to," she frowns, crossing her arms. "Don't need your pity-feteing."

"Clara Oswald, I am many things, but a pity-feter is not one of them." He raises her chin with his fingers again. "Look at this face. Does this look like a face that can resist the prospect of a bouncy castle?"

Her lips are quirking upwards against her will. "Not historically, no."

"And will there be sack races?"

"Pretty much always."

"Ah, see, there you are! I'm fantastic in the sack."

"Oi,  _shut up_ ," she laughs, giving him a gentle shove.

He catches her hand and pulls her along with him, spinning her once and capturing her with both arms from behind.

"Lucy Montague and Jamie Pond," he chuckles, kissing her neck. "We've got  _aliases_. Ooh! We can pretend to be  _spies_."

"Mmm, yes... investigating aliens infiltrating the egg-and-spoon race," she teases.

"Shockingly probable, in my experience."

"Yeah, I've just realized, that's a standard Tuesday for you."

"And what's a standard Tuesday for  _you_?"

She cranes her neck up to look at him. "What do you mean?"

"Well, it is Tuesday, last I checked. What would you normally do tonight?"

She blushes a little. "Grade homework. Eat toast. Watch  _EastEnders_. Read a bit. Sleep."

"Forget I asked, new and improved question. What do you do on  _fun_  Tuesdays?"

"I… don't really  _have_  fun Tuesdays," she says sheepishly. "Work in the morning and all that."

"Bollocks. To.  _That_ ," he declares. "Get on the bike."

* * *

"Okay, so, impromptu picnic plan developing minor issues," the Doctor announces.

They're huddled underneath a shop awning in a booming thunderstorm, their food still hanging in a Tesco bag from the Doctor's fist.

"Think I see a bench five awnings down," Clara squints. "Should we run for it?"

"Oh, definitely, yeah," he grins, holding out his palm for her to take.

She stares at it for a lingering second, a look of wonder crossing her face.

Then she slides her hand into his.

And they're running again, screaming and laughing every few seconds as the spaces between the awnings drench them. By the time they reach the bench, they're both soaked.

He sets the bag down on the seat, plopping down beside it. "Not certain the crisps survived that particular adventure."

Clara laughs, dancing from foot to foot as she rubs her own arms. "Oooh, the one time you don't have some enormous coat on. We're both gonna freeze."

"Nah," he grins, taking her hand and pulling her towards him. "Don't think so."

"Oh? You have a cunning plan?"

"The cunning-est," he declares, yanking her into his lap.

"Well, I like it so fa— _mmph!_ "

His lips have claimed hers, and she winds her arms around his neck. His hands slide into her hair, and she gasps when his lips leave hers and find the tender spot beneath her ear.

"You're right," she breathes. "This is much better than  _EastEnders_."

"Well, I do  _try_ ," he purrs against her throat.

"Although the preview  _did_  look pretty riveting..."

"Riveting, hmm?" The palm cupping her knee begins a slow ascent up her skirt. "I  _must_  know more."

"There were… um…  _people_ …" she breathes raggedly as his fingernails trace a delicate trail northward. "They were… doing things… at places…"

"Can't believe you're missing it." His teeth scrape lightly over her neck.

"And there was a girl…  _ohhhhh_ … who lost some... stuff…"

"Speaking of girls without  _stuff_ ," he growls into her ear, "Clara Oswald… where  _have_  your knickers gone?"

"In my bag…  _ahh!_ … had to. They developed…  _lunch problems_."

His wicked chuckle sends a bolt of heat through her. "What sort of...  _lunch problems_?"

"You know  _damned well_  what sort of lunch problems..."

He draws circles with his thumb. "Would these be the same  _lunch problems_  you seem to be currently suffering? You can tell me, I'm a Doctor."

"Well, once upon a time, I met a silly monk who tried to lure me into his snogbox..."

"Have to watch out for that type," he agrees, brushing his knuckles against the junction of her thighs. "Never know what fiendish liberties they'll end up taking."

"We are  _in the street!_ " she hisses, thwacking the bulge of his hand through her skirt.

"I  _know_ ," he nods solemnly. "Like I said.  _Fiendish liberties_."

He moves his hand back to her knee, rubbing little circles there. "So this monk fellow… who I'm assuming was incredibly clever and handsome… did he ever get you in the snogbox?"

"As a matter of fact, he did."

He kisses her cheek. "And were more fiendish liberties taken?"

She dips her head to his ear. "Not  _nearly_  as many as I wanted."

He swallows hard. "Ah, the plot thickens. And what  _did_  you want?"

She takes his hand, presses it to the side of her face. " _Look and see_."

She's truly surprised him, she can tell. She strokes his fingers encouragingly, watching his face as he closes his eyes and enters her mind.

A few seconds later, his eyes are wide open and locked on hers, shocked and amused and dark with arousal.

"Home," he growls. " _Now_. Or hotel room. Or shrubbery. Getting less picky by the moment."

* * *

He lifts her off the back of the bike and doesn't put her back down, holding her to him with one arm while the other tugs the sonic out of Rory's jeans to unlock her front door.

She has to wrap her legs around him — not that she minds — and they go crashing into her front hallway, slipping and sliding on the puddles of water forming around them.

They're utterly drenched. He rests her on the edge of the hall table, yanking off his helmet as she unbuckles her own. The helmets crash to the floor, followed by a hail of thuds and wet slaps as rain-soaked boots, sweaters and shirts join them.

Down to just his jeans and her skirt, he swings her down from the table and pulls her by the hand into the lounge, pausing a moment to aim the sonic at the hearth, which roars into a blaze.

"When did you —?" she starts to ask, but loses all interest in the fireplace upgrade when his lips find her neck and he yanks the blanket off the back of the sofa.

She takes it and unfurls it in front of the hearth, sinking down onto the middle and looking up at him. He's frozen in the act of removing his belt, uncertainty in his eyes.

"Clara," he whispers. "If you have any doubts… if you think you'll have any regrets.  _Please_  stop me now."

She reaches up, hooks her index finger in his waistband and tugs. "Get. Down. Here."

He crawls on top of her slowly, holding himself up to gaze down at her in the firelight. "Did I ever tell you that I painted you once?"

"You did?"

"I did not do you justice," he marvels, running his knuckles down her jawline.

Clara hides a wince. She's trying to hang on to her heart, here, and when he does things like  _this_  — acting like she's something precious and exquisite, treating her with borderline reverence — she can feel it slipping right out of her hands.

"Well, now you can paint another one," she quips, "And you'll know where all the naked bits go."

She can see it flash within his eyes: surprise, hurt, rejection. She shakes her head, turning his jaw and forcing him to meet her gaze.

"It's not… I don't… you're  _leaving_  soon," she says, placing his hand over her heart. "Please don't take this with you."

He stares at her for a long moment, a million emotions crashing over his face.

Then he bites his lip and nods.

As swift as a switch-flip, his tender, serious expression is gone, masked by a teasing grin.

"Clara Oswald," he purrs, "I'm going to do things to you that I don't normally condone under any circumstances."

"Oooh, and he brings out the  _dirty_  talk," she forces herself to volley back, relief and disappointment crashing together painfully in her chest.

He brings his mouth down on hers, his thigh sliding between her own...

But it's...  _off_ , the mood a little ruined, the energy between them spiraling down instead of up. She's thinking too much, she can tell he is too, and she racks her brain for a way to put things right again.

She tears her lips away, points at her head. "Do you want to…?"

He smiles sadly. "No, Clara."

"Well, I mean, what you said about Time Lords and ankles… and I don't mind…"

" _No_ , Clara," he says more firmly, lifting himself up. "It's a bad idea."

"But… why?"

He rolls off of her, onto his side, and tugs both her hands to his chest in a mirror of her earlier gesture. "For the same reason you gave."

" _Oh_ ," she breathes, pulling her hands back.

He props his head up in his hand. "Now you know how I feel, I suppose."

Her nose wrinkles. "I do?"

"I don't do…  _this_." He points between his naked chest and hers. "Nearly never, and especially not with people I'm close to. You say you're holding back because I'm leaving soon... well, try being twelve hundred years old.  _Everyone_  leaves me soon."

She rolls onto her stomach, pillowing her head on her crossed arms. "I know. It's the real reason I wouldn't live on the TARDIS."

"What? It was?"

"Mad-eyed monk banging at my front door," she smiles wistfully. "Funny and smart and kind and silly, so full of life. Knew I was in proper trouble, and that was all  _before_  the magic travelling snogbox. But that's when I realized how careful I had to be."

He's listening intently, his eyes searching her face.

She raises herself up on an elbow. "Why do you think I told you to come back the next day and ask me again?"

At the time, he'd assumed she wanted a day to think it over... but he knows her better now. "You already knew you'd say yes. You were seeing if I'd actually come back."

She nods. "You hadn't exactly known me a long time... from my perspective, anyway. For all I knew, you just went around picking up the first shiny bit of tinsel you saw on the ground."

He frowns, but says nothing.

"I could tell, even then, how hard I could fall. How much you'd mean to me, and how there was no way in hell I could ever mean that much to you."

Now he does open his mouth to argue, but she shushes him.

"I've been a guest at two of your weddings, Doctor. I've met three of your wives; I know there's at least five others. When your history is written, I won't even merit a chapter. I'll get a paragraph, if I'm lucky. You'll forget all about me."

"I will  _never_  forget you," he insists.

Clara smiles softly. "Doctor… you  _already_   _have_. For me, that part happened years ago. You moved on and you never looked back."

"You're not a  _paragraph_ , Clara. You're the reason there's a second half of the book. And when you jumped into my timestream, you wrote your name on every page."

She chuckles a little. "Most of that was invisible ink, though. And my original point stands. Compared to you, humans are mayflies."

"I don't...  _want_  it to be that way..."

"But it is. You just said it yourself... that's why you don't do  _this_." She repeats his earlier gesture of pointing between them. "And don't think I haven't guessed why you almost did it tonight."

"Clara..."

"This isn't about  _me_. There's not some special, shaggable quality I have that the others didn't. I don't doubt you're attracted, but I've seen the women you travel with. Hell, the last one was an actual fashion model."

She sits up, covering her bare breasts with her arm. " _This_  almost happened because you know that Trenzalore's coming. You're a soldier, getting one last  _piece_  before you... ship out to the front."

He stares at her... gobsmacked, furious.

"Tell me I'm wrong, Doctor. Tell me that's not what changed. Because the timing's  _quite_  suspect."

"You're wrong," he growls.

"You're  _lying_."

"Well, you're half-right... but for the wrong reasons!" he explodes.

He lurches upwards. "You think things changed because I found out I was going to  _die_? As long as you've known me, Clara, I've thought this was it… my last face, my last life. I've known I was going to die on Trenzalore for  _ages_  now. You didn't show me my  _death_ ; you showed me my  _life_ , continuing on, for longer than I'd ever dreamt possible."

"Okay," she says, arms still crossed and looking away. "Okay, I'm sorry I said the soldier thing. I know you're not... like that. You're right… I was wrong."

He crouches in front of her, turning her face towards his. "I said you were half- _right_. You  _did_  show me something that terrified me. You showed me that my time with  _you_  was almost over."

He searches her eyes, scowls at what he sees there. "You don't believe me."

Clara sighs. "I  _want_  to. I wish I did. It's just… actions speak louder than words, you know?"

He frowns.

"I would have stayed with you forever if I'd thought you actually wanted me to," she says. "But you sent me away, stood me up, and ditched me… over and over and over."

She bites her lip. "The friends I have now… Martha, Mickey, Jack... even Craig feels it a bit, I think… we've all got that little  _twinge_  in common, you know? Not quite  _ranking up there_. Martha and I've talked about it quite a bit. Her coming after Rose, me coming after Amy. Even being a first face didn't make me special enough to keep."

"Clara?" His voice is low and simmering with frustration.

She sighs. "Yeah?"

" _This is going to hurt_."

He takes her by the shoulders, and slams his head against hers.

_Gorgeous, sexy Amy Pond… who he'd loved first as a seven-year-old, and then like a sister._

_Ferocious Donna Noble, the no-complications best friend he'd so desperately needed._

_He shows her his awkward, painful memories of Martha, letting her feel how much he'd admired her as a person… and how it hadn't been anything close to enough._

_And then he shows her Rose._

_Rose Tyler, who'd dazzled him through two incarnations. Rose Tyler, bright as the sun, bringing him out of the darkness. Rose Tyler, torn away from him in an instant._

_He'd waited too long to tell her he loved her… three times._

_The list flies by, a flipbook of lovely faces. Some more like friends, some more like daughters or students, only one like Sarah Jane Smith._

_And then he turns the camera on Clara herself._

_Oswin, who'd entranced him without so much as a glimpse of her. Victorian Clara, who he'd desperately bargained with the universe to keep, then ransacked the cosmos to find again._

_And the real Clara... the Impossible Girl, a potentially deadly mystery. He'd been so suspicious, he'd tried so hard to keep his distance... and yet the air had hummed with electricity whenever she'd been around, fogging his judgement and magnetizing his hands._

_Greedy, eager, he'd jumped from Wednesday to Wednesday to Wednesday with no pause in between. There was such a thing as too keen, and she'd made him the definition._

_He shows her his secrets, the moments of weakness that had left him feeling sick and ashamed. The console levers he'd thrown just to graze her breast with his arm, the glances up those too-tight skirts when she climbed the stairs. All the times he'd feigned ignorance about the TARDIS deleting her bedroom, quietly hoping that Clara might ask to use his._

_He feeds her his terrified agony as he'd watched her walk towards his timestream, his overwhelming joy when he'd pulled her back out, his impotent rage when he'd learned of what had happened to her in the years since he'd regenerated._

Clara's gasping, rubbing her head, staring at him with wide, awestruck eyes.

"Don't you  _ever_  tell me you  _don't mean that much_  again," he snarls.


	12. Chapter 12

The Doctor jerks to his feet, his breathing ragged. He's said too much,  _shown_  too much... way,  _way_  too much...

Clara's staring up at him from the floor, and every second she doesn't speak feels like sinking in quicksand.

_What had he been thinking?_  He'd scared her off earlier just telling her that he'd  _painted_  her once... and somehow, he'd thought it was a good idea to show her how he'd acted like a  _perverted stalker_?

And worse, so much worse, he'd  _physically hurt her_  to do it...

He pulls his eyes from hers, and manages to find the only view more guilt-inducing... his own reflection in the mirror over the mantlepiece.

Half-naked, dripping wet,  _dressed up as Rory Williams_... and at that thought, he's even more ashamed.

He's  _not_  Rory, no matter how much Clara makes him wish he could be.

Was that the real reason he'd worn this today?

Dressing up as a human is one thing... but he doesn't have the  _right_  to dress up as this one.

Rory Williams. The Last Centurion. The Boy Who Waited Ten Times Longer, whose love for Amy had been a beacon lit in every timeline, powerful enough to jump-start a plastic heart...

_Will she be safer if I stay? Look me in the eye and tell me she wouldn't be safer._

A fragile clockwork man, dragging the impregnable Pandorica a centimeter at a time through a hailstorm of bombs. A human soldier in unspeakable agony, hands shaking, but able to keep his gun aloft if it would buy Amy a few more seconds of breath...

_It_ has  _activated, ma'am..._

At the end of everything, forced to choose between a beak-nosed human from Leadworth and a semi-immortal demigod with power over time and space, his glorious Pond had made the right choice. The nurse, not the Doctor.

Well done, Amelia. Well done.

_I don't care that you got old. I care that we didn't grow old together._

That was the kind of partner  _Rory_ was. But  _him?_

_Never let him see the damage,_ his own wife had said.  _And never, ever let him see you age._

Oh, yes, the Doctor had heard her... and it had  _burned_.

_Never let him see the damage._

Proof that his wife, his own  _wife_ , agreed with his darkest thoughts about himself.

That he was intrinsically destructive... and too much of a coward to face the wreckage he'd created. Watch him run, oh, watch him run.

_Never let him see the damage._

Those words had chased him to Victorian London, snarled and snapped their teeth at him from the ground beneath his cloud.

_Never let him see the damage._

And then those words had come to sickening life. Clara Oswin Oswald, lying on a table in the flickering gaslight, a flawless porcelain doll in her fancy bustled dress. And lying unseen, just beneath that lovely surface, the raw truth of what he'd done to her: organs punctured by bone, twisted spine and seeping blood, that merry heart losing the struggle to beat.

He'd begged the universe for another chance, and this was what he'd made of it: Clara Oswald, lying on the floor in the flickering firelight, half-naked and so perfect it terrifies him. Once again, the damage is all beneath the skin... and how hard she'd tried to hide it from him, to send him back to his box never knowing what he'd done, what he'd cost her.

"Clara, I'm sorry. So sorry. So unspeakably..." he chokes on the word, so powerless to fix anything. "I'm going to go. I should have gone before, but I'll... I'll go now."

"Doctor, hang on, no, wait…" Clara calls, but he's too deep in his own guilt. He climbs the stairs, shuts the guest room door behind him, turns to collect his things.

He's not alone in the room.

It's...  _him_. Future Him. Fergus McCrabby. Pickle Man. Sitting on the bed.

" _Five times_ ," his older self says. " _Five times_  I've had to tweak this scenario, and every time,  _you_  find a way to bollocks it up."

This is  _so much worse_  than the mirror.

Even seated, the man feels dominant. His clothing is simple, dark, and practical, his hair shorn close, his movements few and purposeful. Everything about him seems to say  _No Bullshit_.

And from the way his older self is looking at him, the Doctor suspects he may be this man's  _definition_  of bullshit.

Something like relief floods through the Doctor when he remembers that he  _hates_  this version of himself. He's him, but he's  _not_ , and he's somewhere else to point this self-loathing...

"You think  _I've_  bollocksed something up?" the Doctor marvels, laughing in disbelief. " _You're_  angry at  _me_. After everything you did, everything you let happen? She was your  _first face_!"

"Ah, my first face, yes.  _The heart's axis_ , as we say at home." His future incarnation pushes himself off the bed, tapping his own temple with a finger. "I can  _hear_  you, you know. Your thoughts - boom - my memories. You've been here for days, and not  _once_  has it occurred to you what you did to me."

"What I did to  _you_?"

"Question: Why did you send Clara home from Trenzalore?"

"It was dangerous," the younger Doctor says uneasily.

"Oh, certainly. A sky full of terrors. But you already knew about  _those_." His older self is circling him now, his voice low and mesmerizing. "You made the deliberate decision to go  _fetch_  Clara and bring her  _to_  that danger. So your answer is incorrect. Try again."

"How'm I supposed to know?" He hates how sulky his voice sounds, how defensive the other man is making him feel. "I haven't done it yet, have I, and I've only seen the thing from Clara's perspective.  _You're_  the one who remembers it."

"The Silence terrorized her, and you didn't send her home. The Angels nearly took her, and you didn't send her home.  _Think_. What made you do it?  _When_  did you do it?"

The Doctor searches Clara's memories. "After I realized the Time Lords were behind the crack."

" _Immediately_  after. The next words out of your mouth, point in fact. Now tell me: why didn't you say goodbye?"

"I suppose... Clara would have suspected something."

His older self shakes his head. "You're cleverer than that, and she trusted you implicitly. Why didn't you say goodbye?"

And suddenly, the Doctor gets it. "Because... I was standing in a truth field."

" _You were standing in a truth field_ ," his older self says with satisfaction. "Who knew what you'd blurt out that you hadn't intended. Supplemental question: Why did we send Sarah Jane home, all those centuries ago? We told her humans weren't allowed on Gallifrey, but that wasn't it. What was the  _real_  reason?"

"I knew the High Council would use her against me. They  _knew_  me, my motivations... and my weaknesses. They wouldn't have ignored potential leverage like that. She might have been taken hostage, hurt, even..."

"A simpler answer, with fewer words. Try for three."

The Doctor meets his next incarnation's eyes unhappily. "I loved her."

The other man smiles slightly. "Good. Now: Why did you send Clara home from Trenzalore?"

"Because I couldn't risk the Time Lords finding out how I felt about her," the Doctor realizes. "Even in their diminished state, I couldn't trust them. They wanted something from me that I wouldn't give them, and if they'd realized how important she was… she would have been the perfect bargaining chip."

" _There_  you go. And then you spent the next  _nine hundred years_  alone… because you'd screwed up and fallen in love with her."

His older self smiles… an unsettling, vulpine thing. "Think that might have had any effect on how  _I_  cooked up?"

" _Okay_ ," the Doctor grudgingly admits. "Regeneration's adaptive. I can see how not loving Clara any longer would be an advantage..."

"When," asks the other man in a venomous growl, "Did I  _ever_  say I didn't love her?"

"I've  _talked_  to her! I've seen her memories! You were all  _grr, not your boyfriend, don't touch me... insulting_  her all the time! If you  _loved_  her, you had a damned funny way of showing it. You were incredibly…"

"Cold?" the other Doctor asks. "And whose fault was that?"

The Doctor blinks. "You can't  _possibly_  be saying it's  _mine_."

"You  _set me up_." His older self's voice is frosted with resentment. "Pretending to be her  _perfect boyfriend_. Groping her like a hormonal schoolboy. You  _knew_  you had nothing to offer her but heartbreak, and you toyed with her affections anyway."

The Doctor opens his mouth in outrage, but the other man's far from done with him. "I treated her the way you  _should_  have. I set appropriate limits and I maintained them. I offered her friendship, respect, and trust. And thanks to  _you_ , all that felt like a cruel rejection.  _You_  convinced her to jump… and doomed  _me_  to be the concrete she splattered on."

The Doctor swallows hard.

"I was  _cold_ , you say. Question: If I'd been honest with Clara... told her how lovely she was, how precious to me... if I'd given in, even  _once_ , to my compulsion to touch her… what would  _that_  have done to her, in the state  _you_  left her in?"

The Doctor's just gaping at him now, so the older man continues. "Answer: It would have convinced her that  _you_  lurked inside me like a buried fossil… and that with enough patience, enough of her  _life_  wasted, she could chisel you back out."

" _Cruel to be kind_ ," the Doctor says, beginning to understand. "But if that's how you feel, why all of  _this_ malarkey? Why  _order_  me to kiss her, why put  _that_  passcode on the box? You say I went too far… but you pushed me to go  _farther_."

"Oh, believe me, I'm not doing it for you." His successor points through the floor, steel in his voice. "That is  _my girl_  down there, and you made her promises you didn't keep."

"I  _never_  made any..."

"Oh,  _please_ ," the older man snaps. "All those pretty little compliments, all those murmured endearments. You baited a  _hook_."

The older man leans in to growl in his younger self's ear. "So get down there and  _keep your promises_."

And he's just —  _gone_ , leaving the younger Doctor whirling in surprise.

"Oi, he can lay it on  _thick_  when he wants to," Clara says, shaking her head. She's leaning against the doorframe, still barefoot, but with a t-shirt thrown on over her work skirt. "And meanwhile, he honestly thinks I'm just gonna lie downstairs with my tits out while you two re-enact  _Fight Club_."

"Clara, I'm so sorry..."

She holds up a restraining hand. "Wasn't cross. I was speechless. Big difference. Knew about that head-thing from Craig. Can't say it felt nice, though… more warning, next time."

"You're really not angry?"

"Am a bit, but not for the reasons you'd think. Do get tired of being treated like a child. Here  _he_  comes, acting like my Dad on the porch with a shotgun, and you're just as bad. The next time you two hold a summit about my feelings and future, here's a crazy idea — invite  _me_. Might have some insight to add."

She searches his face, sighs. "Oh, no. You've gone full-throttle emo, haven't you."

"I just crossed my own timeline to berate myself for ruining your life, Clara. I'm not excreting self-love from every pore."

"Look, I adore the old stick insect, but he can be an  _idiot_. He could have sat me down like an adult and  _explained_. But no, he's got to call me  _fat_  every five minutes and make everyone dance on his little puppet strings..."

" _Puppet strings_ ," the Doctor repeats, wheels turning in his head, "Clara, did you hear the part where he talked about 'tweaking the scenario'?"

"Missed that bit, but…" Clara halts in sudden realization. "Oh,  _no_."

"Those are rapidly becoming my least favorite words in the English language."

"He's doing it again. Playing  _Mr. Fix-It_. That word, 'scenario'... I've heard him use it before." She's pacing now, gnawing on her thumb. "This is what he  _does_ , scribbling on that bloody chalkboard of his all day. He looks at history like a… like a calculus problem, figuring out what variables he's got to adjust to get the outcome he wants."

" _Question_ ," Clara announces… and the Doctor startles a little at how well she can mimic his next incarnation's accent. "How can I repair the loss of the man Clara loved? Answer: I'll give her back the one she loved even more. Conjecture: I can manipulate the variables of an event in my past to make that happen."

"You think  _he_  brought me here."

She thinks about it, shakes her head. "No, I've watched him do things like this, that's not… how he rolls. More likely, you've  _always_  shown up here at this time, and..."

She turns to him. "Did you see him arrive?"

"No. Didn't hear the TARDIS, either."

"Oh, you wouldn't. River gives him hell about the handbrake. You saw him  _leave_ , though?"

The Doctor sits down on the bed, miming an explosion with his hands. "He just... poofed."

"He does that. But if he's truly  _gone_ , he's using River's manipulator." Clara snaps her fingers, then points to the blue box on the bookshelf. "I bet you fifty quid there's something in  _that box_  keeping the TARDIS away... yours  _and_  his."

The Doctor's eyes widen, following her train of thought. "When I first arrived, you told me straightaway that I'd crossed my own timeline. I would have left immediately… had I been able."

"Maybe that's exactly what happened... before he 'tweaked the scenario'," Clara guesses, sitting on the bed next to him. "You came, I warned, you left."

"But a window of opportunity had been opened," he muses.

"Yep — a little  _loose thread_  he could pull and twist." She plucks at the quilt between them to illustrate.

The Doctor's eyes widen in realization, his gaze locked on her hand. "Clara Oswald, you owe me fifty quid."

She laughs in surprise. "Beg pardon?"

"The thing keeping the TARDIS away isn't in that box. We're  _sitting_  on it."

"What... the  _quilt_?"

He nods. "Where did you get it?"

She searches his face. "If that look is any indication, you already know."

"I have a hypothesis. Humor me."

Clara sighs in reluctance, knowing how sore of a subject this is. "Brian Williams came to see me a few months ago. River had given him my address, as a way of getting in touch with her. He said he needed to talk to someone who wouldn't think he was crazy."

The Doctor nods a little, and Clara continues.

"He said that just before Rory was born, a nice old woman moved in next door... recently widowed and Scottish, though she said she'd been living in America for years. He'd asked her why on earth anyone would move from New York to  _Leadworth_ , of all places, and he said her answer was so strange he'd never forgotten it. She told him she was…  _waiting_."

The Doctor lets out a harsh breath, hangs his head.

"Doctor, you know what's coming, and it's hurting you to hear it…"

"Finish it," he says roughly, then adds: "Please."

"Brian said she'd been a godsend... kept Rory in the daytime so his mum could go back to work, really doted on him. The quilt was the one Rory used at her house. It became his security blanket, so she gave it to him. Brian said that it was on Rory's bed until he moved out and got married."

"Right," the Doctor smiles, damp-eyed. "Of course it was."

"Anyway… Brian was cleaning out his attic and found the quilt. He hadn't thought about that old woman in decades, but once he did… he realized who she must have been. He thought River would want it, so he left it here for her."

"But she told  _you_  to keep it instead... and I'd wager the convo didn't happen in person."

"Right, it was over the phone, but… how did you guess that? And why would the TARDIS run away from  _Rory's blankie_?"

"I  _knew_  there was something familiar about the fabrics in that quilt. When you're living in America during the Great Depression, you don't waste a scrap… especially not a perfectly decent set of warm clothes you can't wear because they're from 2012."

"A vintage quilt sewn from modern clothes," Clara realizes.

"And not just  _any_  old modern clothes," he sighs. "The clothes they were wearing when they caused a temporal paradox big enough to poison every weeping angel in Manhattan."

Clara blinks in disbelief. "Hold on a mo… are we seriously discussing the  _Cozy Quilt of Doom_? Because that may be the weirdest thing I've ever heard, and it's got some serious competition."

"Think about it, Clara." the Doctor runs his fingers down a line of stitching. "The fabric itself is dangerous enough. But this is the quilt that Amy Pond swaddled her  _newborn husband_  in... and probably got up to all sorts of naughty shenanigans underneath later. Or earlier. Or later. Hence the problem. And the big temporal cherry on top... if Rory carried this around as a child, then it came into contact with his daughter… when she was his age."

He taps a striped square from the shirt Amy'd worn the day he lost her forever. "The first time I saw this, I had an uneasy feeling… but it'd be worse for the TARDIS, so much worse. This thing is a nightmare collage of paradox. River gave it to you because she couldn't take it with her..."

The Doctor trails off, turning to Clara. "How long ago did Brian come by?"

"Not that long… two or three months ago?"

The Doctor presses his eyes closed. "Well. That explains that."

"Explains  _what_ , exactly?"

"You guessed that that the Time Lords had gone looking for me at my 'permanent mailing address'. Well, if I have anything like a  _secondary_  address, it'd be here in Britain. And if you were narrowing it down from  _there_ , trying to find the place I was most likely to return to, you'd choose the place I had already visited the most."

"Victorian London?"

"Not the place I stayed the longest… the one I  _visited the most_. Time travel leaves scars, Clara, as no one knows better than you. Imagine you're sewing a golden, glowing thread through a map of London. Every time the TARDIS lands and takes off, that's a stitch. Over time, stitches in the same location would build up, making raised areas on the map. Metaphor's a bit rubbish, because the map's also moving through  _time_ , but..."

He sighs. "Now picture the kind of knot left at a place I stitched at least twice every Wednesday for three years or so."

Clara's jaw drops. "You mean to say that  _Chiswick_..."

"Might as well be a lighthouse, to the Time Lords."

He pushes himself off the bed, starting to pace. "I figured  _that_  out this morning. What I  _didn't_  understand was why they'd show up at  _this_  time… six years past where the biggest knot would be."

"Because the Cozy Quilt of Doom came to Chiswick then," Clara guesses, shaking her head. "That seriously just came out of my mouth, didn't it."

"Yes, the Cozy Quilt of Doom came to Chiswick." the Doctor points towards the guest room closet. "Where it was parked three feet from clothing worn  _by me_  during three centuries of time travel. If Chiswick's a lighthouse, this room is the foghorn."

"And when that foghorn blew… you weren't here yet to find."

"Right. But Donna  _was_ , just a few streets over."

Clara bites her lip. "Donna has part of your DNA, yeah? Enough that the Time Lords might confuse her for a family member?"

The Doctor nods.

"You sent me home so the Time Lords couldn't use me as leverage. What would they do if they thought they'd found your  _child?_ "

The Doctor whirls. "My supposed daughter, who happened to be vulnerable to vortex energy…"

"Should we call Sarah Jane and her husband and warn them? Are they in danger? I mean, he's got  _all_  your DNA, and they're  _married_ , so he can't really hide his feelings there…"

"They'll be fine… he's human right now," the Doctor shrugs, then considers. "Actually… that may be  _why_  he's human right now."

"Yeah, I'm still  _really_  confused by that."

"Did Martha ever tell you about the Family of Blood?"

"Oh, wait… that time you stuck her in 1913, surrounded by racists and forced to be your maid?"

The Doctor pouts. "Not my  _exact_  intended summary…"

"You think he used that same… arch thing… to hide from the Time Lords?"

"It's certainly possible. Sarah Jane's safety would be more than enough incentive."

"How does that thing  _work_ , anyway?"

"It's called a Chameleon Arch. Modifies the cells of one species into another. Stores the original biology in a…"

His eyes go wide, his voice dropping to a stunned whisper. "...  _watch_."

"Doctor?"

But he can't hear Clara at the moment; his mind is whirling too quickly.

He's thinking of what he'd said about Donna...

_If she were an actual Time Lord, this would be a normal part of her development, and her body would be prepared for it._

If she were an actual Time Lord.

_If she were an actual Time Lord..._

He rushes across the room, seizing the blue box and pulling out River's letter.

_You said not to give you any hints, but this you is just too much fun to tease._

_So here you go, darling: it doesn't have to be a watch._

"Doctor, seriously, you're freaking me out," Clara says. "What's going on?"

" _It doesn't have to be a watch_ ," the Doctor says. "Clara —  _it doesn't have to be a watch!"_


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Twelve bothered me, so I rewrote it. I'm really not sure how Capaldi ended up sounding so much like Severus Snape, but hopefully I've fixed it. The same basic things happen, so you won't miss anything by moving on, although one of Eleven's lines in this chapter won't make as much sense.

"The Chameleon Arch stores the biological backup in a watch... but it's no ordinary timepiece, Clara, not at all. The watch is just the case for what you might conceive of as a  _flash drive_  — a tiny slice of the Matrix on Gallifrey."

The Doctor paces, his hands gesturing wildly. "But what if you stored that data in another place? An  _organic_  file system…  _human_  DNA. You lot have got all sorts of blueprints rattling about in there you don't actually use… instructions for making tails and gills and furry coats and what have you."

"I'm following you so far... I think?"

"Donna's a fully grown adult; her body is in maintenance mode, not growth mode. That's a win for Team Us, Clara… means she won't pop out an extra heart at a rude time. Her cells will still replace themselves, of course, so there will be  _some_  differences… at a guess, she'll age more slowly, but that's fairly peachy as side effects go..."

He raps on his skull. "But in her  _brain_ , oh…  _that's_  the good part,  _that's_  the golden ticket! In her  _brain_ , where the vortex energy has triggered the growth, those dormant blueprints would be activated. Her body starts building the cellular structures required to support Time Lord consciousness, and  _presto-chango_ … well, not  _actually_  presto-chango, as it'd take a while to grow all the bits, but point being…  _the Doctor-Donna rides again!_ "

"So she'd have a Time Lord brain, but she'd still be human?"

"She'd still be a Metacrisis, but a far more stable one, like..." He whirls, pointing at her. "What silly name did you all give Metacrisis me?"

"Don't get cross, but…  _Handyman._ "

He has a look of outrage all prepared, but brightens instead. "Don't mind that one, actually, quite sensible. Man version of me, grown from my hand. Not bad. Who came up with that one? Have them do all the rest over, they're clearly the smartest of the bunch."

Clara's lips quirk. "That one was Mickey's."

The Doctor appears to have just swallowed a bucket of lemons. "Well. Right. Yes. Okay. So anyway, she'd be more like... Handyman. Rubbish name, really..."

Clara glares, and he sighs.

"Mickey's fine, Mickey's lovely," he admits, pointing at her again. "Don't you  _ever_  tell him I said that. Moving on…"

"I think I get the theory part. How would you actually  _do_  it, though? Would you have this Arch thing like,  _scan_  you and store your DNA?"

He stills, realizing that she  _hasn't_  realized. "Oh, Clara. No. I'd have to  _use_  it."

"On…  _yourself_ ," Clara says in dawning horror. "You'd erase your memory and become some completely different person, with no idea that he's  _you_?"

The Doctor wrings his hands. "Human brain can't hold a Time Lord consciousness. That was Donna's whole problem, originally."

"How...  _you_  would you be?"

"I'd be…" he searches her face, smiles sadly. "I suppose I'd be an  _echo_ , wouldn't I? With the right settings, what I became would be as similar to me as Oswin was to you, and I could give myself analogous memories."

"How long?" Clara demands. "How long would you have to be an… echo of yourself?"

"The rest of Donna's life," the Doctor says quietly. "Which would be a bit extended. She never would tell me how old she was, but at a guess… I'd need to do it for fifty, sixty years?"

Clara crosses her arms. "This plan is rubbish and I hate it. Find another one."

He fiddles nervously with the edge of the bookshelf for a moment. "Clara… are you in love with me?"

Her eyes fly wide. "What?"

His smile falters. "I take it that's a no."

"I didn't say  _no_ , I just…" Clara looks mildly panicked. "I just don't see the relevance of your question."

He chuckles ruefully. "I tell you that I might spend the next sixty years on Earth,  _as a human_ … and you don't see the relevance of my question."

Her eyes fall to her lap; she swallows hard. "Yes. I am. Okay? I am.  _Happy now?_ "

"Actually,  _yeah_ ," he grins daffily. "Was that so hard?"

"Don't see  _you_  saying it," she mutters.

"I direct-downloaded it into your mind via lightning-transfer head-smash," he complains. "Now I have to  _say_  it, too?"

"Yes!" She squares herself, stands up. "Yes, you  _do_. You made  _me_  say it,  _you_  have to say it. You already made me go first, which is the scary one, so put on your big boy pants."

"Fine, fine,  _fine_ ," he pouts, crossing his arms and mumbling towards the corner of the ceiling. " _ClaraI'minlovewithyou_."

"Eye contact, enunciation,  _audible volume_ ," she hisses.

"Two out of three?" he wheedles hopefully.

She glares.

Eyes on the ceiling, he tries again. "Clara Oswald, I am idiotically in love with you."

"Well, you've certainly picked the right adverb."

"Shouldn't we be… smooching or something now?" he whines, still looking upwards.

She stalks towards him, grabbing him by the chin and yanking his face down so he has to meet her eyes.

" _There_  we go. Now: do-over.  _I'm in love with you._  Your turn."

His eyes soften, a small smile curving his lips. "I'm in love with you."

"Not bad! You win one smooch."

"Really? Only one? Weren't we just... rolling about, half our kits off and tongue-y things happening?"

"Doctor…"

"I'm just saying, it's a bit of a downgrade…"

Clara makes a noise of exasperation and kisses him.

He flails for a few seconds — she wonders if it's some kind of default setting — before his arms slide around her.

He breaks his lips away. "So you're okay with it, then? Me turning human, us getting married, all of that?"

" _Whoa_!" she cries, pushing herself back with a hand. "Whoa, whoa,  _whoa!_  We haven't even gone on a  _date_  yet! Let's, let's just, let's do things in  _order_..."

"Didn't I  _die_  six years ago?"

"Okay, you raise an excellent point. But still. Just, uh… take half that list and put it on a back burner. A very, very,  _very_  far in the back, possibly all the way off the hob, burner."

His face falls. "I just… I thought maybe, if I was human… I could be  _better_ , you know. Not so…  _damaging_. Do right by you, like Rory did by Amy."

"Okay, that is very weird and sweet, but I still  _hate_  the idea of you not being quite...  _you_. Couldn't we try to think of something else?"

"I really think this is it, Clara. You said Pickle Man was trying to  _fix_  things for you, yeah? And he said all that to me about keeping my promises..."

"So his  _big plan_  is to make a human kinda-copy of himself." Clara shakes her head. "Not very  _original_ , that one. I didn't even get to go to the beach."

She's halfway through the word 'beach' before she realizes how badly she's just messed up… and a glance at the Doctor's face confirms it. He's managing to look guilty, stricken, rejected, angry, offended, defensive, and surly all at once, which is a feat even for him.

"Doctor, I'm… I'm  _so_  sorry," she stammers. "My mouth just… I know that's an  _incredibly_  sore subject, and I'm…"

"It's fine," he lies. "It was a fair observation."

"No it  _wasn't_ …"

He smiles... a tight, thin line. "And you're right; I was putting the cart several light-years before the horse. So let's back up, shall we?"

"Don't like where this is going, don't like your tone of voice one bit…"

" _Noted_ ," he says crisply. "Here's what you need to know. I owe Donna Noble the world, and I  _will_  do this for her.  _You_  don't have to be involved at any point or to any degree."

"Let me get this straight," Clara retorts. "You told me you were  _in love with me_  five minutes ago, and now you're talking about  _completely cutting me out of your life_  because I made one bad joke.  _Loving_  how stable this relationship is."

He sits down on the bed, sighing. "You and I may be too alike, Clara."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"We're both…  _runners_ , aren't we. When we're hurt, or scared, or our pride is threatened. We don't like vulnerability and we don't like people knowing our secrets. Maybe two people like that just won't work. Without one person willing to run  _after_  the other, you just… end up running in opposite directions."

Clara sits on the far edge of the bed from him, her voice stricken. "Do you really think that?"

"Maybe," he lifts his hands helplessly. "I asked you once why we never crossed the line, and you said it felt like everything in the universe was conspiring against it. Maybe it's that  _we're_  conspiring against it. Our basic natures."

"I always thought, if we had more time together… but you're saying it wouldn't have mattered anyway," Clara says.

"Possibly not." He pauses a moment, steeples his hands. "Clara… I do want to do this for Donna, but after  _this_  conversation… I think it'd be best if I went with the full memory re-jig, like Sandshoes did."

" _What?_ " she whispers.

"Probably not the greatest plan to have two human me's in the same city anyway. Perhaps I'll go to America. Always seem to get in trouble over there, could be fun..."

" _That's_  what you want? To forget I even  _exist_ , and... disappear somewhere we'll never cross paths again?"

He nods sadly.

" _Oh! You! Ridiculous! Man!_ " she cries, thwapping him on the shoulder at every word. "You want me to  _run after you_  to prove myself? I  _killed myself_  and split myself into a jillion copies so there'd be  _more of me_  to run after you!"

"Okay, that is a... fair point..." he grudgingly admits.

"Sorry I hurt your feelings by not doing  _cartwheels_  at the prospect of marrying you, but you forget — I'm  _friends_  with your  _wife_ , so that's a slightly awkward concept for me!"

"Another valid criticism," he says sheepishly. "Although given her involvement, I suspect she's blessed the..."

His eyes widen, and he pushes himself off the bed, heading for the bookshelf. "In her letter, River said that once I knew what I needed, it would be in that box. So if this is the right answer..."

He opens the box. It's empty, and he sighs... until he notices a slight shimmer to the bottom panel. Tentatively, he presses his fingers to the wood… and they go right through.

His hands clutch around something cold and cylindrical, and he pulls it out of the box.

"What's that?" Clara asks.

"Lindos inhibitor," he says, tossing it to her. "Very important component of a Chameleon Arch. Prevents the cellular rewrite from triggering a regeneration."

She turns it in her hands like a glass of worms she's been ordered to drink. "So this really is the plan, then."

He sticks his arm back in the box, groping around and finally removing a flat disk that looks a bit like a miniature CD. "Ah… the template. Parameters for my human life get programmed in here."

"What do you mean,  _parameters_?"

"Who I think I am, where I'm from, who my fake parents were. All of that."

"Fantastic," she sulks, tossing the Lindos inhibitor on the bed.

"Clara, Mr. Pickle obviously thought you'd be  _happy_  about this…"

"Well, then he's  _stupid_ ," she scowls. "I find out that you actually  _love_  me, and now you tell me that you're  _committing suicide_  soon."

"It's not…"

"Sixty years, you said. I'll be  _dead_  by the time you're  _you_  again. So yeah, from my perspective, you're telling me that you'll be gone forever."

"Clara, what do you like about me?"

She starts to protest, but there's something so vulnerable in his face that she stops. "It's... a lot of things. I'm not really good at this kind of thing..."

"Try."

"Okay." She takes a deep breath. "I like... your enthusiasm. How excited you get about things, how you still have so much wonder despite everything you've seen. You're funny... really funny... and silly, and smart. I like the way your hands flap about all the time, and the peculiar way you talk... and you're kind, so kind, so full of compassion. You  _care_. You'd ditch the Grand Poobah of the Multiverse if you heard a child crying..."

"Clara," he interrupts gently, "Those are all  _human_  traits."

"But how could you be  _you_  without your memories?"

"Well, I'd probably be far less 'emo', as you called me earlier."

"Suddenly warming up to the plan…"

"Really? Or was that banter?"

"Probably banter," she sighs, collapsing a bit. "I don't know  _what_  to feel. I love the idea of you being around for the rest of my life… but if it's not really  _you_ , it just sounds…  _icky_."

"Do you know what it sounds like to me?"

"What?" she asks, biting her lip.

"An incredible, sixty-year vacation."

"You're joking."

"I'm not." He sits next to her on the bed. "I run and run and run because I'm  _haunted_ , Clara. Every adventure, every mad dash through time and space keeps me distracted, keeps the bad thoughts away. All the people I've loved and lost, all my failures, all the people I couldn't save. That's one of the things that terrifies me most about Trenzalore… the idea of being alone with my thoughts that long. And I'll still have to go… but maybe, not yet."

She nods, reaching out and taking his hand; he strokes his fingers over hers.

"In a way, this has been building up inside me the whole time I've been here. I saw a photo in Martha's office, one from Sarah's wedding… you know it?"

"The group shot," Clara nods.

"It was the first time I truly realized how many of the people I love are clustered here in  _this_  time, in  _this_  place. It's… well, it's a hell of a lot more enticing a retirement than  _beekeeping_ , how's that."

He sighs. "The thing is, Clara, I  _hate_  myself too much to just... give myself this kind of gift. The gift of peace, however brief. Have to keep running, have to keep saving. But if I'm doing it for  _Donna_ , if it's the thing that can save  _Donna_ … I don't have to feel guilty about it. I could rest."

"Okay," she says, brushing his hair back from his face.

"Okay?"

"When you describe it like  _that_ … okay. I won't fight you about it anymore. You deserve this. You've earned a rest. Hell, I told you that  _on_  Trenzalore."

They share a smile, and he kisses her hand.

"So… is that all the mysterious box was, after all?" Clara asks. "Just a crate of parts?"

"Don't know," he shrugs. "Can't actually see  _into_  it to know what all's in there. I suppose I just keep grabbing until there's nothing left to grab."

"Can I have a go?"

He gestures towards the box, and Clara crosses to it, her fingertips touching and passing through the empty bottom. "Ha! Platform 9¾."

He chuckles, and Clara sticks her hand further in, fingers waggling in what feels like nothing… until she hits on something that feels like paper.

She brings her hand up until she can see it again. It's an envelope, identical to the one he'd had out earlier, with "CLARA" scrawled in River's distinctive handwriting.

Beneath her name, in smaller letters:  _(When you're alone)_.

There's something small and hard inside. Clara glances at the Doctor, but he's picked up the Lindos inhibitor and is examining it with the sonic. She quickly slips the letter between her two translations of  _Meditations_  and stuffs her arm back in the box before the Doctor looks back up.

"Your arms might be too short," he guesses.

"No, no, I've got something, hang on…" her fingers touch something like a book, and she pulls it out.

"It's a  _passport_ ," she says once she's fished it up. "Suppose you will need this…"

She flips it open… and explodes in laughter.

"What?" he asks, rising half-off the bed. "Clara,  _what_? The photo can't be  _that_  bad."

"The photo's  _fine_ … James Alistair Pond."


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever had your characters do something you totally didn't expect? On a completely related note, the rating has been changed to Mature. If anyone's against that sort of thing, I can provide a synopsis of the important plot points in that section so it can be skipped.

"No, no, no, rubbish,  _no_ ," the Doctor snaps, tossing a handful of identification and bank cards onto the Cozy Quilt of Doom. "Absolute lunacy,  _will not do_. River ought to know me better than this, and Pickle Man's got absolutely no excuse."

They're both sitting on the bed, which has become barely visible under a litter of paper, mechanical parts, and tools. The box, truly empty now, is still lying teetered against the door, where it landed when he threw it in a fit of temper.

The Doctor had laughed at the passport along with Clara… but the more of his documentation paperwork he'd pulled out from the box's depths, the lower his mood had plunged. He  _still_  hasn't explained what's so bad about it, alternating between glaring with his jaw hinged to one side and letting out long sighs.

"Doctor," Clara says gently, "If you hate it  _that_  much, let's just call Kate Stewart. She did my documentation, and you saw how good those badges were..."

He nods, giving her hand a little  _it's-not-you-I'm-angry-at_  squeeze. "Good thinking, give ol' Kate a call. First two names can stay, but…"

"James Alistair?"

"Guessing that's for McCrimmon and the Brig. Quite pleased with that part, actually."

"So the problem is the…" she winces, "...  _Pond_  part?"

"Don't mind the name itself. Plenty of Ponds in the… sea," he trails off awkwardly, then surges onward. "But look what they've  _done_."

He tosses her a piece of paper that turns out to be a long-form birth certificate.

"Your parents' names are meant to be  _Augustus_  and  _Tabetha_? Suppose that does stretch the bounds of believability…"

"No, those aren't made-up names, Clara!" he leans over, jabbing the paper with his finger until it rattles. "Those are actual names, of actual parents…  _Pond's_  actual parents! They've made me her sodding  _little_   _brother!_ "

"Oooh, okay," Clara says hesitantly. "So the problem is, the Ponds are real and would know you weren't their son?"

He shakes his head. "Built-in perception filter, enforces the story in the template. Once they laid eyes on me, they  _would_  think I was their son."

"Couldn't you just…  _not_  go see them?"

"If I program the template to match  _this_  rot," he says, gesturing to the identification documents all around him, "Then, no… because  _I'll_  think they're my parents, too. I'll always be popping up to Leadworth to help Mummy out with the gardening or go golfing with dear ol' Dad. And I'll probably  _love_  to sodding golf, because I've become sodding  _Scottish_  a millennium ahead of schedule."

"This says you were born after they moved to England..." she tries, but he's having none of it.

Clara racks her brain for a way to say her next thought without hurting his feelings, but she can't think of one. "Doctor… maybe this is… part of Branston Pickle's fix-it? Making sure Amy's parents are, you know… taken care of? They've probably been..."

 _Lonely without their only child for the last seven years_  is the end of that sentence, but she'll be damned if she's saying  _that_  out loud.

"Sure, fine, if they'd swapped us 'round so they remembered "Jamie"  _instead_   _of_  Amy. That'd be okay. But that's not what they've done. Look at  _these_."

He uses his arm to scoop an untidy pile of photographs towards her, and Clara takes the first one from the top.

It's the Doctor — well,  _Jamie Pond —_ standing in a graduation gown, flanked by Amy and Rory.

"Whoever Photoshopped this is  _incredible_ ," Clara breathes, holding the photo closer to her nose. "You looked this young when you regenerated?"

"Not Photoshop, Genetishop. DNA-extrapolated 3D modeling, and also  _not. the. point_."

She shuffles the photos into a tidy stack and flips through, unable to suppress a coo at a photo of a tiny Doctor and Amelia holding a puppy in front of a Christmas tree.

"My God, the  _ears_ ," Clara marvels. "It's like they just popped out full-sized and the rest of you tried to catch up."

"That's not actually… it's a genetic extrapolation… my ears are perfectly proportional!"

"For a sugar bowl..."

"Oi, at least I'm not a giant pair of eyeballs with tiny boots wiggling out the bottom."

She doesn't even look up from the photographs... just uses her free hand to lift up her t-shirt enough to briefly flash one breast.

"And… room for certain other parts, betwixt eyeballs and boots," the Doctor murmurs, then points accusingly. "Is this how you're planning to distract me from now on?"

"Long as it keeps working," she chuckles.

"Well, it's  _not_ , because I can remember perfectly well what I was discussing. It was… ah… there was…  _yes_." He remembers why he's cross. "They  _haven't_  swapped us 'round. This is just… pre-programmed heartache, is what it is. Life-long, incessant reminders that Amy's gone...  _and_  a front-row seat to her family's suffering."

"Maybe River knew that Amy'd punch you for forgetting her, even for a few decades?"

It slips out before she can stop it, and she winces for the fallout… but perversely, this thought seems to have cheered the Doctor up immensely.

"All too true... all too true," he says, smiling now at the graduation photo. "Very well... I'll program her in myself, but not like  _that_. She can be the naughty flame-haired hellcat who deflowered me at university while I quivered in terror. She'd like that."

"Didn't realize it got  _that_  detailed..."

"I can manually add relationships to the template, or let the program generate them automatically from environmental cues. Latter's what Sandshoes did, mostly, but he was in a bigger hurry. Total auto mode's far too much of a crapshoot, though. Someone could come up and kiss me on the street and I'd think they were my wife."

"Keeping you well away from  _Jack_ , then…"

He laughs a little, then turns serious. "Clara… how would  _you_  like to be programmed in?"

"Well, I  _was_  holding out for deflowering university hellcat, but I suppose I can make do with scraps."

He shoots her a wicked grin, and starts to speak… but a loud grumble from her stomach startles them both into laughter.

"Our picnic sort of…  _drowned_ , and then we got distracted…" she says sheepishly.

He smiles, standing up. "I'll make you something."

She almost tells him she'll just get something herself… but then she remembers the letter hidden in the bookshelf. "That'd be lovely, thank you. I, ah, do have a bit of marking up to do before tomorrow… mind if I stay up here and work?"

He kisses her forehead and heads downstairs, and she waits until she's heard the creaky bottom step before she crosses to the bookshelf, pulls the letter out, and carries it to her own room, locking the door behind her.

The hard thing in the envelope turns out to be a shiny little disc, identical to the one the Doctor had called the  _template_. She wraps it in a hankerchief and tucks it in the bottom level of her jewelry box before opening the letter itself.

* * *

_Dearest Clara,_

_Isn't he just a nightmare when he's having a sulk? Bless._

_If I know that stubborn mule I married, he's refusing to go along with the identity we've supplied and is insisting on programming his own. There won't be any talking sense into him, which is why I'm giving the correct template disc to_ _you_   _instead. Humor him, but make certain_ _this_   _disc is the one in the Chameleon Arch when it activates._

_And if I know_ _you_ _, you're frowning right now, probably chewing on your thumb, upset that I'm asking you to ignore the Doctor's wishes. I promise you, sweetie, I'm not._

_The 'puppet strings' you've been dancing on aren't Branston Pickle's — they've been Captain Fez's all along._

_He came up with this plan on Trenzalore. We've modified some details — for example, he planned to use Jack Harkness to scare the TARDIS away, and Dad's quilt was a much easier variable to control — but the basic blueprint was always his._

_Remember, he believed he was dying; he didn't think he had any future days to give you, so he schemed to give you ones from his past._

_Had he actually died, Emergency Program One would have returned the TARDIS to you on Earth at the moment it left, playing a pre-recorded message to give you a proper goodbye and set these events in motion._

_So, again — this_ _is_   _the Doctor's idea. The Mister and I are just carrying out his final wishes. The disc I've given you is the final product of centuries of thought and planning. It's far superior and more comprehensive than what he'll be able to come up with in a few days._

 _It has to be this one_ _. Promise me you'll make it happen, no matter what it takes._

_Nine hundred years is a very long time indeed... and if you spend enough of it alone and consumed with regret, you're certain to torture yourself by dreaming up all the better ways you could have handled things._

_You might realize that you could have prevented your wife's death with just two TARDIS hops._

_You might realize why Donna Noble died young... and how you could have stopped it._

_You might realize that the simple answer to your worst heartbreak had been written in the book from the very beginning._

_And you just might realize that the ten minutes you spent in 2019 by accident so many, many years ago could be exploited to give you... everything._

_All right — that's all on my end. I'll see you soon, I expect._

_After all, if this works, you'll be my new Auntie._

—  _River_

_P.S. Turn around. And do be gentle with him. He's in a bad way, poor thing._

* * *

_Turn around?_

She does… and Branston Pickle is standing in the doorway to her bathroom, his face in the shadows.

"Doctor?" she breathes in surprise.

He takes a step forward into the light. His eyes are red, his cheeks tear-stained... and she's scrambling off the bed and towards him in an instant, stopping just short of actually touching him. She knows how much he hates that.

"Doctor? What's wrong? Has something happened to River?"

He shakes his head slightly. "She's fine."

"Then what…?"

"Oh, Clara," he whispers, his eyes locking onto hers. "I  _remembered_."

And she nearly faints from shock when  _he_  hugs  _her_ , dropping his face into the crook of her neck, his tears hot against her collarbone.

Huge-eyed, she reaches up one hand to tentatively pat the back of his head, and he chokes on a sob.

"Uh… okay... wow." She keeps up the awkward patting. "This is...  _new_. Suppose I must die  _really_  gruesomely..."

The hug had surprised her.

The kiss nearly flash-fries her brain.

His mouth is tear-brined and demanding, far more aggressive than his younger self had ever dared to be with her, his hand immediately dipping to knead the secret hot spot at the base of her spine. Only one prior boyfriend had even managed to  _find_  that particular erogenous zone, and  _ohdeargod_  he hadn't been this good at exploiting it...

Her neck arches involuntarily, and his lips tear from hers to press against her pulse, the perfect blend of suction and teeth that shocks a needy groan from her throat.

_Oh, God, of course… he remembers. He's just remembered decades spent on Earth with me. He must know every inch of me, everything I like... he's probably had me every possible way…_

She's not quite sure why it's  _that_  thought that makes her knees give out, but he seems to anticipate it, catching her and walking them towards the bed.

She's thought about this, of  _course_  she has, but he'd told her from the very beginning that it wasn't going to happen. That hadn't stopped her from the occasional daydream, or odd bit of ogling, but she'd forced herself to stop even  _that_  once they'd rescued...  _oh, no..._

"You're  _married_ ," she gasps. "And also, really weirdly…  _downstairs_ …"

"Cleared with the missus," he growls, sucking her earlobe between his teeth. " _Not_  cleared with the idiot below, but he  _owes_  me. I'll behave…  _but not yet_."

This is  _so wrong_  on  _so many levels_  and she is apparently  _so_  incapable of stopping, trapped between his thrusting hips and the edge of the mattress and  _when did she wrap her legs around his waist?_

But that's  _yes_  and him yanking her shirt off is  _yes_  and pushing her back into the pillows is  _yes_  and all she can think is  _yes yes yes_ when he shoves her skirt up to her waist and grins that predatory, wolfish grin at the sight of what she's still not wearing.

His fingers slip inside her, curling, pressing; they know exactly what they're looking for, and she bucks off the bed when he finds it, whimpering when he moves his thumb to rub practiced, hard circles in perfect rhythm.

She's close to the edge in seconds, one hand grabbing a throw pillow and smashing it over her face to muffle the noises she can't help making.

He rips it away, tosses it aside. "Soundproofed when I arrived. I have to hear you. I want you to  _see me_ , Clara,  _look at me_ …  _look at me_..."

His free hand cups her jaw, forcing her gaze to his face. She nods frantically, trembling, her breath in ragged little gasps. " _Please_ … p-please… I'm so… so…"

" _Yes_ , Clara," he hisses, eyes lit with fire, hand moving faster. "For me. For  _me_."

"I… I…"

" _Now_ ," he commands, and she breaks apart, her whole mind turned red and blank, back arched and coverlet clenched in white-knuckled fists.

When she can open her eyes again, his fingers are in his mouth, and she lets out the breath she's been holding.

"What... what was..." she stammers, the fog in her brain slowly receding to reveal complete disbelief.

"I needed you," he says simply.

She starts to pull her skirt back down, but he seizes her hand: "Don't."

"Doctor..."

"Your first, my  _last_ , Clara. I want to look."

She swallows hard, still panting as he bends over her, pushing her skirt back up like he's unveiling a work of art. He lifts her arms, pressing them over her head, trailing his warm hands back down them to briefly palm her breasts.

"Beautiful," he whispers. "Never more so than in this state."

"Did you... just want to be  _first?_ " she asks, not quite sure if she's flattered or angry. "Some macho,  _competitive_..."

"Nine hundred years ago, I gave you a leaf," he says. "When another version of yourself gets  _everything_ , it helps to have at least one thing that's yours."

"What about the...  _appropriate limits?_ "

"Don't hide from this with bantering, Clara. And some of that was said to steer him in the direction he needed to go."

"Have you... always wanted...?"

" _Yes_. But I could control it, as long as I kept my distance. Today... I couldn't. I needed to see this one more time."

"Come here," she says. "Please."

He does, lying on her chest, breathing in sharply when she massages his scalp with her fingers.

"Doctor... you know it wasn't the  _faces_ , right? You could have  _had_  this, if you'd..."

"I know," he says, sliding his fingers down her ribs. "But this will be better for you. He was right about that much, at least."

"I still don't understand..."

"This plan became his obsession. All those long, dark nights. The moment I truly awoke, it still burned in my head. I crawled from that bed at Vastra's with it pounding through my mind... the variables that would need to be adjusted, the conditions that had to be met. My first step towards sanity, towards becoming  _myself_  was to write it down, work it out, get it out of my head. I believe I actually used her  _floor_."

She bites her lip, glancing down his body. "Do you... want me to, um..."

" _Yes_ ," he says. "But don't. For one thing, he'll have your stove repaired soon."

"You broke my stove?"

"Just a little. Also, you're about to get a phone call."

"What's that now?"

"Well, he can't make  _all_ the plans..."

And then he's kissing her again, one warm palm cupped possessively around her inner thigh, just high enough that it's making her  _want_  again; her hips shift towards him, and he lets out a long sigh.

"I'll see you again, Clara, but never like this. Don't tempt me."

He rolls to his side, taking her tattooed wrist and placing a kiss against it. "I designed this very carefully, you know."

"Mmm?"

"The main message has slightly bolder lines. He was right, you know... it  _was_  'Time Lord's Woman'."

She touches his face with a kind of wonder, and he smiles gently.

"Go on, Clara. Go down there. Give an old man something nice to remember."

And he's gone.

She collapses back on the bed, struggling to make thoughts and mostly failing, her mind a jumble of incoherent fragments.

_Did that really — ?_

_All that time, he — ?_

_Do I tell — ?_

Her phone rings, and she blinks, rising up on her elbows.

He'd said she'd get a call, but her mobile's on the charger next to her bed, which isn't right; it should still be in her bag downstairs...

She glances at the screen, her heart lurching into her throat. Not a name in her contact list, but one she definitely recognizes. She scrambles across the bed, ripping out the charging cord and raising the phone to her ear.

"H-Hello?"

"Hey, Luce," Dave Oswald says. "Sorry to ring so late, but Linda's all over me to find out what's on for your and Clara's birthday. Have you girls made any plans yet?"


	15. Chapter 15

" _Daddy_ ," Clara chokes.

And she knows she shouldn't… oh, how she knows… but she can't help it.

She bursts into hysterical tears.

She hasn't cried like this since she was six years old, lost on a beach in Blackpool on a bank holiday Monday. Her whole body is shaking, her breath coming in wheezing gasps; she turns to bury her face in the pillows.

Four years of dammed-up despair is pouring out of her, four years of grief and loneliness, four years of the creeping, icy terror of having no one to catch you if you fall.

_Don't think_ , the Doctor had ordered her once... and she'd obeyed. He'd never asked her how she'd managed it, but she could have told him:  _practice_.

She's spent the fourteen years since her mother's death avoiding silence, filling her life with noise and distractions, her thoughts permanently trapped in a cage of broken glass. Let her mind stray too far in any direction, and she'd hit one of the walls —  _mummy's gone, my mummy's gone_  — and frantically flee to the center again, bleeding out.

Her mother had promised that she'd never be lost again… but oh, her mother had  _lied_. Clara had lost  _her_ , and then, God —  _everyone_ , the jagged walls of that cage closing in all around her, hardly able to move without ripping herself open on a jutting shard of  _Danny_  or  _Gran_  or, worst and seemingly everywhere,  _Daddy, Daddy, my Daddy_.

Her handful of Doctor-friends, the only ones with whom she could still be  _Clara_ , had all been comforting — but they'd been match-light on a moonless night. She'd felt herself growing dependent on them, her cheeks scorching with humiliation when she finally realized just how often she'd been phoning, how many meet-ups she'd been organizing, how desperately she'd been pushing herself into the lives of busy people with families of their own.

She'd tried to make them into something they could never be; she'd tried to use them to replace something that could never be replaced. And realizing that, she'd steeled herself, clutched her pride like a talisman, and tried to do it alone.

One foot in front of the other,  _just one more step_ , the same way she'd left his timestream... but this time, with no one waiting open-armed at the finish line. Every morning, the blare of the alarm, knowing the chill that would greet her the moment she moved an inch from tiny warm spot in the bed she'd managed to create by herself. Cup of tea, piece of toast — cooking for one made so much more mess than it was worth, really — and off to face the lions.

She'd chosen a cruel and draining profession, though it had taken her a few years to truly realize it. She'd been too buoyed at the beginning, too pumped with adrenaline from madcap adventure and the giddy promise of love. The children had been the same as now — just as eager to tear her apart if it meant impressing the others for an instant — but she'd worn TARDIS-blue armor, back then.

But years of sitting alone in the witching hours with the rolling news channel for company had worn that armor down to paper thinness. Time had eroded marriage proposals from Emperors and a hundred saved universes from her current definition of herself, entombing them like old trophies behind dusty glass; not really  _hers_  any longer, but the property of a younger, brighter self growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. She'd sat silently in the teacher's lounge as half-fossilized ex-punks in tweed and pastel twin-sets traded bragging-tales of wild nights at concerts and drunken escapades at university, knowing they were only echoing the plea in her own heart:  _I used to be awesome. I don't understand how I became_ this  _instead, but please believe me — I used to be awesome._

Without someone to laugh at her jokes, to complain when she didn't answer her phone, to light up when she walked in the door, she'd been left with no mirror but the eyes of her students... and what a reflection  _that_  had been. Miss Montague, Ruiner of Fun, the Tyrant of Four-Page Essays, the Vessel of the Final Exam... mocked for enthusiasm, despised for effort, constantly scanned for exploitable weaknesses. She'd given and given of herself with nothing to refill the tank, and it had left her empty, empty, empty.

And she cries for that emptiness, for the toast and the match-light and the broken-glass cage, for Christmases spent chewing a Tesco Finest and watching home videos on the Oswald-Pink family YouTube account.

She cries for the day she'd come home to a broken dishwasher and an inch of soapy water in the kitchen. She'd slipped and landed hard in the lake on her floor, cradling her sprained wrist. No one to call to drive her to hospital, no one at the door with his rusty old toolbox to fix it, no thought in her supposedly grown-up head but a wailed:  _I want my Daddy!_

On the other end of the line, her father's concern is turning to panic, a soaring baritone aria of  _darling-what's-happened_  and  _honey-please-say-something_  that's the sweetest and most wonderful sound in the world.

And far behind it, other noises: the mosquito-whine of a sonic screwdriver, the click of a door lock, footsteps.

The phone is gently lifted from her hand; an arm slides around her, cradling her to a bare chest. She buries her face against the Doctor's shoulder and wails.

"Hullo, Mr. Oswald," the Doctor says. "Terribly sorry if we worried you... we've just watched  _Armageddon_ , and I think Lucy'd already be driving to Blackpool if we weren't having such a storm."

She can hear her father's explosive breath of relief; the Doctor must have put her mobile on speaker. "Ah, Jamie, hullo! Thank heavens. Don't you get any notions about blowing up asteroids, now; I'm no Bruce Willis."

"Wouldn't dream of it, sir," the Doctor smiles, uncurling a hand's worth of fingers in Clara's direction and mouthing  _did it_   _five times_.

She cracks a tiny smile and hiccups another half-sob, swiping at her runny nose with the back of her hand. "Sorry, Dad…"

"Oh, Luce," Dave Oswald says with fond exasperation. " _Every time_. Remember when we took you girls to see the one with the talking toys? You wailed so loudly, Ellie had to carry you out of the theater…"

The Doctor is rocking her now, a slight sway back and forth. "Mr. Oswald, would you mind if Lucy called you back in a few minutes?"

"Take your time, take your time. Didn't mean to interrupt your date."

After a few more pleasantries, the Doctor hangs up the phone and drops it on the bed beside them, his now-free hand knuckling tears from her cheeks, murmuring her name into her hair.

The more she calms down, the more logic returns. "How did you know? What to say to my Dad… that it  _was_  my Dad?"

The Doctor winces. "What's your landlord's policy on 'IT'S HER FATHER — BLAME A SAD FILM' being etched into the electrics of your stove in Old High Gallifreyan?"

She lets out another sob-laugh, and his arms tighten around her.

"I've been outside the door for quite some time, Clara."

She freezes, on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Got too quiet, saw your schoolbag still in the hallway. Came to check on you, found the room locked and dampened… by my own sonic."

"And you…  _undampened_ ," she guesses unhappily.

She feels him nod against the top of her head.

"And then?"

"And then I forced myself to sit down and think very, very hard."

"About?"

"Beaches in Norway," he says, releasing a shuddering breath. "And what it feels like to give away your first face to someone you think will be better for her."

" _Oh_ ," she says, and kisses him.

He responds a moment later, and there's an  _edge_  there that wasn't before; he drags her lower lip between his teeth, and she wonders if he's a perhaps a little more jealous than he's willing to admit.

He breaks their mouths apart after a moment, their foreheads pressed together, breath mingling. "You've… had quite an emotional day…"

"Both have, I'd say." She tugs his hand to her still-bare breast, feels him shiver.

"So maybe this isn't the best…"

"No," she says. "It  _is_  the best. While you're still  _you_ , even if it's just once.  _Please_."

And maybe it's all his thinking about beaches, but her  _while you're still you_  seems to galvanize him; he's kissing her again, his hands sliding into her hair, pulling her against him. She lets out a sharp breath as her bare chest meets his; in the chilly room, he's incredibly warm, and she wraps her arms around his waist, presses herself gladly to his skin.

She lets her hands glide over the planes of his back, feeling his muscles shift beneath her palms, and she nearly sobs again.

He's so...  _real_. Really here. Fairytale phantoms from your dreams don't taste like fruit-flavored toothpaste, don't gasp against your lips, don't smell like rain and shampoo and  _man_. His stubble scratching her jawline, his damp hair wetting her fingers, the haze of hot breath between them… this is  _actually happening right now_ , and she feels like she could break apart with gratitude.

Everything she'd lost. Everything she'd lost, and never dared to hope she'd find again… and  _him_  the most impossible of all. He's  _real_  and he's  _here_  and unbelievably, incredibly, he's  _staying_. She wants to laugh and shriek and punch the air; she's so giddy she's nearly high.

But then he deepens the kiss, tongue gliding over the tip of her own, and something red and hungry awakens and uncoils in the pit of her stomach. He's too far away, too much space between them, and she tears her mouth from his just long enough to straddle his lap.

"Better," she smiles, winding her arms around his neck.

"Always seem to end up like this," he chuckles.

"Well, there's a height differential," she grins. "Plus, I'm the boss."

" _Right_ ," he drawls, his hands sliding down to cup her behind. "But you know what they say about control freaks, don't you?"

A breath later, he's standing up, lifting her with him, turning to drop them both in the middle of her mattress. She lands on her back with him tumbling after, catching himself with his hands on either side of her.

"And I  _suspect_ …" he breathes against her ear, capturing her wrists in his hands and pressing them up against the bed. "You secretly quite like it when you're  _not_  the boss."

She shuts her eyes against the little thrill that surges through her, blushing at the moan of arousal that escapes her throat. He chuckles against her neck, and when she opens her eyes, he looks every bit as smirky as she'd expected.

"Right, then, Clara Oswald," he whispers. "Time to find out who you are."

* * *

Clara Oswald is 153.7 square centimeters of pale skin begging for his attention; Clara Oswald is 3,874,011 nerve endings, exquisitely sensitive to variations in temperature, pressure, and vibration. Clara Oswald is a quick, clever mind — or at least, she was a an hour ago, back when she could still make coherent thoughts.

She has new thoughts now, like  _right there_ and  _oh yes_ , and she is so incredibly  _not_  the boss right now.

The current boss has her knees hooked over his shoulders, her fingers in a death-grip on his hair, and her vocabulary reduced to utter vulgarity.

She finally shocks him into laughter, peering up from between her thighs to ask her whatever happened to the sweet little Clara who said  _oh, my stars!_

And oh, she could just  _kill_  him for stopping — wait, was that noise  _her_ , did she just actually  _hiss_  at him? — but he's crawling up her body and her heart skips, knowing what's next.

She hears his zipper, and her eager little hands are already moving, pushing at his waistband with a greed that makes him chuckle. He lifts his hips so she can slide the jeans down, inhaling sharply when she encircles him in a tight, sweat-slick fist.

" _Clara_ ," he breathes, and the sound is so ragged that she can't help grinning.

Still the boss, just a bit.

His hand cups hers and she guides him, her eyes fluttering closed as the hard tip of him presses and catches. His eyes lock on to hers, silently asking for permission.

" _Please_ ," she whispers. "Oh  _please_ , I  _need_ …"

He pushes inside her, and her whole body arches, fingernails digging into his shoulders. There it is,  _right there_ , the last piece she desperately needed… the undeniable reality of him within her, and it's  _perfect_.

Neither one of them moves for a moment. His lips are parted, his face alight with something like wonder, or disbelief.

He slowly withdraws before burying himself again. His eyes have closed, and he almost looks like he's in pain.

"Doctor," she asks in growing alarm, "Are you okay?"

His answer is a short, musical set of syllables; she can tell it's Gallifreyan, but can't translate.

"What did you just say?"

Another long, slow roll of his hips. "Say it back to me."

She does; he corrects her pronunciation slightly, but she gets it on the second try.

Whatever the hell it means, he certainly likes hearing it; he jerks hard against her, biting his lip.

"What does it mean?"

He smiles, doesn't answer.

"But you want me to say it."

"No, Clara Oswald," he growls against her throat. "I want you to  _scream_  it."


	16. Chapter 16

The Doctor's moving faster now, steady and deep, their breathing labored, their foreheads pressed together. Her fingertips play across the ridges of his spine, and suddenly, an echo's memory flashes:

_Staring at a display of historical Lord Presidents, unsure why her heart is suddenly racing, why her fingers are rising of their own accord to trace the circles of one particular name..._

_His_  name...

Oh, God —  _it's his name._

The beautiful, foreign word he'd promised to make her scream.

The terrifying, dangerous secret he's just entrusted her with.

She breathes it against his neck, wanting to taste it on her tongue again, and he groans, low in his throat. His eyes find hers, and she can tell; he knows she's figured it out.

" _Clever... girl..._ " he gasps out, the beads of sweat on his brow glittering as he moves over her. "But... still... not...  _screaming_..."

His fingertips press against her cheek, and she's nodding  _yes_  before he can even ask. Inside is good,  _more_  inside is better, she wants him everywhere...

And it's not a  _scream_ , not yet... but her body arches helplessly beneath him, a strangled cry ripping from her throat.

_She can feel what he feels._

She's  _inside herself_ , hot and slick and velvet-heaven, fever-pulsing pressure deep within her building, demanding, driving her to plunge again and again and again. The pleasure is mirrored, doubled, given and received; she  _is_  him, he  _is_  her, and he's the one who whispers  _harder_ , but the word spills from her own lips.

He grips her hips, her headboard slamming against the wall and banging, banging, banging; she's sliding upward across the sheets, just managing to wrap her fists around two brass spindles before her head knocks into them. She uses the leverage to push herself down, grind up into him, and  _oh, God, yes,_ that's  _good_ , that's  _so, so_...

 _Look, Clara_ , his voice echoes inside her mind.  _Look and see_.

She's not quite sure how she obeys, but she's opening  _his_  eyes... staring down at herself, flushed and glistening, breasts swaying with each crash of his hips into hers, lips parted and panting with want. His long fingers are trailing down from her belly button, dipping to rub circles...

Oh, God, that's too much,  _too much,_ too much for any person to possibly feel...

Now, she screams.

She's carried to near unconsciousness by the twin force of it... her own muscles clenching around her, the brain-melting, pulsing jets as she spills inside herself, the warm rush of him flooding into her... the simultaneous, unspeakable relief of  _emptiness_  that turns her muscles liquid.

He collapses on top of her, gasping, a drop of sweat falling from his forehead to hers as she wraps her arms around him.

His hand falls back, their mental connection breaking... but not before she hears a final thought:

_Beat_ _that_ _, Cranky McPickle._

She laughs out loud, and he shoots her a stricken, embarrassed look; she seizes his face in her hands, peppering it with kisses.

"Oh,  _God_ , I love you," she giggles, bestowing kisses on each of his scant eyebrows. "I do, I do, I do, and you  _were_  jealous!"

He slips out of her, rolling to her side. "Logic prevailed in the end."

"Oh?"

"... some time  _after_  I realized he'd installed a more advanced, uncrackable locking program on the sonic," he admits. "I'm afraid there  _might_  be a hole in your wall that  _might_ , completely coincidentally, be the size of my fist."

"But then logic prevailed."

He scratches his eyebrow, looks away. "Well, someone  _may_  have tried to break down your door. Hinges could use a looking-at. Also, shoulder's a bit twingey."

"And  _then_  logic prevailed."

"Yeah," he grins goofily. "At some point fairly soon after that."

"I never meant to hurt you," she says, touching his cheek. "I hope you know that. It's just… he's  _you_. Centuries from now, you come back again, and… how could I reject you?"

"Well, that'd be one item on the list of topics covered during the thinking bit," he says, pushing his hair back. "I did  _win_ , though... right?"

"Not a competition!"

"But I won?"

She laughs. "Oh God, yeah. You  _so_  won."

He beams, but it falls off his face a few moments later. "Ah, Clara… human-me won't be able to do that particular trick, you know. I hope I haven't..."

She places a restraining palm on his arm. "That's fine. I think I nearly flash-fried anyway. Can you excuse me a minute?"

He kisses her hand, and she heads for the lavatory, watching him with a fond smile as he tries to pull the blankets over his nakedness and only manages to flap spastically and entrap himself in the coverlet.

 _Where was_ that  _guy ten minutes ago? Not that I'm complaining..._

She halts in the doorway, sighing. "Have I mentioned lately how  _utterly_  sick I'm getting of cryptic little notes everywhere?"

"Well, I can get the Gallifreyan off your stove if it's an issue, but… oh, is there another one?" He tries to get up, fails, and settles for dragging the blanket with him, wrapped around his hips.

She plucks the blue envelope from where it's propped behind her sink faucet and opens it, pulling out a letter and a stack of photographs. She hands the latter to the Doctor, who flips through them as she unfolds the letter.

"Okay," she says, smiling a little as she scans through Branston Pickle's spiky capitals. "Not so cryptic, this time."

* * *

_Clara —_

_By now, you're aware that your family's memories have been modified, and that they believe you and your echo to be identical twins._

_I sincerely apologize for not doing this until now; I know these last few years have been very painful. Unfortunately, every time I tried to accomplish this earlier in your timeline — and I promise you, Clara, I did try — it disrupted a fixed point. Being chased by a Reaper through the grounds of Westminster Abbey is undoubtedly aerobic, but not an experience I can honestly recommend._

_You'll find a folder in your filing cabinet with new documentation. I've tried to change as little as possible, but I'm afraid I had to give you an ill-advised, short-lived marriage in your youth to one Ethan Montague to explain the surname change. I can only hoodoo so many pudding-brains at once, you know. At any rate, he's a nice lad, remembers you fondly; lives in Morocco now, won't be popping up to bother you._

_Be well, my Clara. Be happy._

_P.S. All memories of Swedish nudists have been obliterated. Tell the idiot he's welcome._

* * *

She folds the letter, passing it to the Doctor, who swaps it for the photographs.

"Clara," he asks, "Who is  _Saibra_?"

"She's a woman we — wait,  _why_?"

"It says ' _Saibra sends her love_ ' on the back of one of the photos."

She holds the first one up, her eyes widening; it's the same photo from Artie's graduation the Doctor had shown her days before, but now there are  _two_  Claras in it.

She flips through, and they're all the same — "Lucy" now appears in every one.

"She's a  _shapeshifter_ ," Clara says, a smile ghosting over her lips. "She takes a gene suppressant for it, but I guess doing a favor was worth skipping a dose..."

He brushes the sweaty strands of her hair from her forehead, kisses her there. "Should you phone your Dad back?"

She glances at the clock, then nods. "I'd like to go see him. Soon as I can. If I went tomorrow after school, would you come with me?"

"I'll even wear clothes this time," he promises, holding up Branston Pickle's letter. "He knew me, did you notice? Your Dad. Recognized my voice, called me Jamie."

"I suppose Branston Pickle programmed you in. Do hope there's a bit more explanation in that bloody folder, since I've got no idea what Dad thinks  _this_  is." She flicks her finger between them.

"At a guess, he'll think we've been together six years. Probably wondering why I haven't made an honest woman of you yet."

"And what will you tell him?" she chuckles.

"The truth, of course! Six years before I got a leg over — clearly, you're frigid." He ducks the arm-punch he knows is coming, smirks. " _And_  unreasonably violent."

"Why six years?" she asks.

"Well, ol' Pickle's  _me_ , ish, and it's what I'd do."

"Oh, the missed opportunity! You could have programmed in a string of imaginary brutish louts to make you look princely by comparison."

"No," he says firmly, pulling her back against him. "They'd have had their imaginary brutish hands all over you, and I'd have been forced to trip them down a series of extremely tall imaginary staircases."

"Mmm, on that topic… you'll be meeting  _Danny_ , now, as he's my brother-in-law.  _Please_  be more civil than Branston Pickle was."

"Ol' Pickle gave him what-for, eh?" the Doctor says lightly.

"I'd tell you just how rude he was, but I can tell from that smirk you're trying  _very unsuccessfully_  to hide that it'd only make you want to high-five him."

"Does Danny  _know_ , Clara? That he's not actually married to you?"

"I honestly don't know. I've only met the other Clara once, and I've stayed out of their lives until now. If he ever knew, he might not any longer. Don't know how comprehensive the 'hoodoo' was."

Twenty-two hours later, she knows: not  _that_  comprehensive.


	17. Chapter 17

_The nightmare again._

_One of them, anyway._

_The moon, the bomb, the lights winking out, the execution order painted by a wave of darkness rolling across the earth. That same wave spreading through her own heart, weighing it down like the moon's impossible gravity..._

_When she turns to the detonation switch, she sees it has grown into a crystal rose._

_When she steps towards it, straw crunches under her feet, and hope sparks._

_She thinks that spark is the worst part._

_Because this is when she whirls, eyes searching for them — Sandshoes, Granddad, her own sad-eyed Chin Boy._

_But they're not here._

_They're never here._

_Hold hands, the Doctor had said once. That's what you're meant to do. Keep doing that and don't let go. That's the secret._

_But the Doctor doesn't hold her hand. Not anymore._

_We don't walk away. He'd said that, too._

_Except that he has._

_She presses the button, and the world goes white._

_She screams herself awake._

* * *

She's cold and terrified and shaking, the blankets kicked off from the force of her thrashing... and  _oh God_ , it was all a dream,  _all of it_ , he never came back and he's  _dead_  and she's still alone, so alone...

Slams and bangs and splashing; the Doctor comes bursting out of her bathroom, hair covered in bubbles and clutching a half-falling off towel, dripping water all over her bedroom floor and calling her name in a panic.

Seeing her, he exhales loudly. "Nightmare?"

She nods, wrapping her arms around herself, teeth chattering.

His eyes soften, and he crosses to tug at her hand. "C'mon. You're freezing."

She tugs right back. "Come back to bed."

"Covered in soap," he smiles. " _You_  come to bath."

She shivers harder at the thought; the water heater in her flat's notoriously unreliable.

But when he pulls her through the doorway, she can just barely see steam rising from the surface of the water. The room's only light is the eldritch glow of the sonic, crammed into the towel bar and pointing at the bathtub.

He notices her confused look. "Needed to have a think. Not quite the sensory chamber on the TARDIS, but it'll do in a pinch."

He steps into the water and helps her in after him; with a bit of laughter and awkwardness, they manage to lie back so that her back is to his chest, her head pillowed on his shoulder. The water is wonderfully, steadily hot, chasing away the cold echoes of her dream, and she suspects the sonic's doing something physics-y to the molecules.

"What was your nightmare about?" he asks, taking the soap and lathering it in his hands.

A dozen potential responses pop into her mind: she could downplay it, say it was just some random bad dream; she could claim to have forgotten, or pass it off with a joke…

But her hand's resting on his thigh, just above his knee, her thumb making whorls in the fine, light hair there; a part of him she'd never expected to see, and certainly never expected to touch in a setting like this. He's taken off his armor to an unfathomable extent.

So she swallows hard, and tells him the truth.

The moon... and the events at Coal Hill that had led to it.

He listens without interruption, soapy hands circling the parts of her he can reach... leisurely at first, then like an outlet for everything he isn't saying, like he's trying to wash the memories off of her.

"And it was worse," she says, the words tumbling out in a rush now that she's begun, "Because I... I'd started to have these flashes, these moments, where I really, truly knew that he was  _you_."

His hands still on her upper arms. "Oh,  _Clara_..."

"There was this... right after the thing with Danny... there was this moment. Danny was inside the TARDIS, we were on either sides of the doors, and he...  _looked_  at me, this  _look_  that was so... so  _you_. And for a second, I swear, it was like he'd gone transparent... and I saw  _you_  instead."

The Doctor sighs.

"And then... of all the places... we went to the  _Moon_." She cranes her neck up to look at him. "I don't know if you got  _that_  memory from my head. It's where we went,  _you_  and me, after Gallifrey. Cocktails on the moon."

He has a secondhand memory of proposing it, but not of their actual trip. "Tell me?"

"You were… giddy. It's strange… young as this face is, you've never really  _looked_  young to me. I can't quite explain it. But you did that night." Despite it all, she can't help smiling. "They had this outrageous cocktail — blue and effervescent, with candy fish. You saw someone else with one and  _had_  to have it. You didn't realize it had ginger beer in it, and  _I_  didn't realize what ginger beer did to you..."

He chuckles a little. "Got trolleyed, did I?"

"We both did." She laces her fingers through his. "The place we were… they turned the artificial gravity down there. Not so much you'd fly away… just enough to make you...  _light_ , like you were in the water. We danced…  _God_ , you were hilarious."

And it hasn't happened for him yet, but he knows the bar he'll take her to, when it's time. It's in — and named — the Sea of Tranquility, with a lush underwater theme. It's so easy to imagine Clara there, her dress and hair floating around her, flushed and tipsy and burning bright.

"That was probably the closest we ever came to…  _crossing the line_ ," she sighs. "We were just sort of… never not touching each other, the whole night, and then…"

She trails off for a moment before continuing. "We were so tired, at the end, and we ended up in this huge armchair on the observation deck. I was sitting in your lap… it was a little like  _this_ , actually, but…"

She moves his right hand to cup her inner thigh, a few inches above her knee, and his eyebrows shoot up in surprise. He  _had_  been hammered, then…

"We just… looked out the window. At the surface of the moon, at the earth beyond. And I was so happy… happy for you, just...  _happy_. And then... you kissed me. Quick, but... properly on the lips. For the first time… and the last."

She leans her forehead against him. "Well, I  _thought_  it was the last. Until you came here."

He winds his arms around her.

"When we landed, I kept waiting for some sign he remembered…  _you_  remembered us having been there. A comment, a look,  _anything_. It'd been so significant to me, so  _huge_ , but… well… it'd been months ago for me, and nearly a millennium ago for him. I get that. He forgot."

The Doctor's sudden laugh makes Clara startle; the water splashes around them.

"What's funny about  _that_?"

"You tell him you're in love with another man, and the very next place he takes you is the only place he'd ever kissed you? He didn't  _forget_ , Clara."

"No," she insists. "It wasn't  _planned_ , it was because of Courtney's self-esteem..."

"Courtney Woods is as famous as Winston Churchill. She was an excuse."

He takes her hands in his. "Think of what he didn't remember... and what he  _did_. He takes you back to the moon, feeling a little guilty for doing it, but a little hopeful, too... hoping you'd be reminded of the last time you were there, hoping that something would change. And it all goes pear-shaped. Nuclear warheads, giant spider-germs..."

" _You_  would have stayed with me."

He's quiet for a long moment, and she feels him slowly shake his head.

"Knowing that you'd fallen in love with a human, someone you were certain to leave me for... I'm not sure I would have had the  _strength_.  _Think about it_. You were choosing what was more important to you... humanity, or an alien creature that was the last of its kind."

She goes still in his arms, and he continues, his voice low and mesmerizing. "An alien creature both unspeakably old  _and_  just beginning its life. An alien creature that had orbited your planet for ages… affecting it, saving it, but never  _part_  of it, not really… alone in the sky, seen but never understood. I doubt the symbolism was lost on him."

"You're saying he left me there because  _he couldn't stand to watch_?"

"I think he didn't trust himself not to interfere if he stayed. Watching you make  _that_  choice, in a place  _that_  significant… I don't think I could have stopped myself from trying to influence you."

Clara bites her lip hard enough to hurt. She's thinking of his smile when he said he knew she'd make the right choice. She'd  _known_  he was hiding something, could see it plain on his face, but she'd guessed  _so wrong_ …

"I called Danny that night," she whispered. "Asked him to come over. Before that, we hadn't… well. You know."

She hears his careful breath, knows he's controlling himself.

"It was just hard to do… that. With the moon watching." She sighs. "But then, after that… the moon started to mean something totally different. Or… I  _thought_  it did…"

"Time and memory are strange things, Clara. Time is rewritten, memories are erased, but it's never quite as  _clean_  as you'd imagine…  _especially_  for Time Lords. He didn't remember  _this_ ," he presses a kiss to her neck, "But he probably  _felt_  things that confused and unsettled him. Fragments of the way things ought to be, but weren't… like a dark shadow in your peripheral vision."

"My friend Adrian," Clara whispers. "He looked a tiny bit like you. Wore a bow-tie, most days. When Branston Pickle thought I was dating  _Adrian_ , he was pleased… but he  _hated_  Danny from moment one, just this irrational…"

The Doctor nods. "Makes sense, I suppose. Adrian would fit those ghost-memories better, feel more  _right_."

"There was another odd thing, too. Danny and Orson were nearly identical, and he'd  _never_  admit it…"

"Never  _wanted_  to admit it," the Doctor guesses. "Because of what it meant for you. Reading the last page of a book is dangerous. Never do it, if I can help it. As long as the story's still happening, as long as you stop before goodbye, there's still hope for changing it."

"Like this," she yawns, stretching back against him.

"Like this," he agrees.

He starts to suggest she go back to bed… but she's already fallen asleep, conked out against his bicep with her mouth hanging open inelegantly. He finds it rather ridiculously adorable.

He'd come in here to think, but the question's been answered for him.

He has an important choice to make in the Arch's programming; whether or not to exempt Clara from the perception filter's effect, as he had Martha all those years ago.

Leaving Martha miserable, out-of-place, and burdened with a terrible and painful secret.

If he  _doesn't_ , years of Clara's memory will be wiped; like her father, she'll genuinely believe that she's Lucy Montague, identical twin, long-time girlfriend of normal, human, Jamie  _Whatever-Name-He-Picks-That-Isn't-Pond_.

She'll forget wonders and adventures and cocktails on the moon.

But she'll also forget Daleks, and Cybermen, and the Silence. She'll forget Thalaxis and the heartbreak after. She'll forget the time winds shredding her into a million pieces; she'll forget  _don't blink, don't think_ and  _don't breathe._

She'll forget  _Clara Oswald, I will never send you away again._

All the nightmares that haunt her, the insecurities and guilt, would evaporate. He'd told her that forgetting, that being human, would be a vacation for him. Could he really take that vacation and leave her holding all his baggage?

And now he knows: he has to lay it all out for her, and let  _her_  decide.

But... he'll hold her hand while she does it.


End file.
